BACCALAUREATE SERMONS 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 



WASHINGTON 



RY J 




ANDREW P. PEABODY, D.D., LL.D., 

Preacher to the University and Plumer Professor of Christian 
Morals in Harvard College. 



( JAN 29 1885^] 

BOSTON 

D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY 

32 FRANKLIN STREET 



\W -s \ 



Copyright by 

D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY 
1885 



PKEFACE. 



In preparing these sermons for republication, I 
find that in some instances a favorite illustration, text 
of Scripture, or subsidiary thought occurs more than 
once. But as there is, as I believe, no duplication of a 
subject or of a continuous train of thought, I have pre- 
ferred to let the sermons reappear in their original 
form. If they can in any humble measure serve the 
purpose with which they were written, the author can 
have no greater joy than in thus renewing and con- 
tinuing the chosen work of his years of active service 
in the University. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

I. 

Religion Unchanging in its Claims. (1861.) . 1. 

II. 

Stability the Condition of Excellence. (1862.) . 18. 
III. 

The Christian Order of Nobility. (1864.) ... 30. 



IV. 

Approval and Choice. (1865.) 44. 

V. 

Manhood. (1867.) 57. 

VI. 

The Sovereignty of Law. (1869.) 72. 

VII. 

Authority. (1870.) 86. 

VIII. 

The Choice of a Profession. (1871.) . ... 104. 

IX. 

The True Aim. (1872.) 119. 

X. 

Treasures in Heaven. (1873.) 136. 



CONTENTS. 

XL 

Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. (1874.) 151. 

XII. 

Our Country's Perils, Needs, and Claims. (1875.) 166. 
XIII. 

Thought, Feeling, and Action. (1876.) .... 185. 
XIY. 

Habit. (1877.) 201. 

XV. ' 

Thorough Life-work. (1878.) 217. 

XVI. 

The Cloud, and the Voice out of the Cloud. (1879.) 234. 
XVII. 

Science and Religion. (1880.) 247. 

XVIII. 

Christo et Ecclesiae. (1881.) 264. 

XIX. 

Hospitality. (1883.) 279. 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



I. 

RELIGION UNCHANGING IN ITS CLAIMS. 

(1861.) 

"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." — 
Hebbews xiii. 8. 

He who would have addressed a graduating 
class in this University a century ago, would have 
assumed the paramount importance of Christ, and 
his religion as felt by his hearers, no less than 
claimed by himself. Christianity was then deemed 
by each and all the prime interest of each and all. 
Not that sincere Christian discipleship was uni- 
versal; but those who were not Christians felt 
themselves almost pariahs, — outcasts, — in a condi- 
tion in which they were afraid either to live or to 
die. The prevalent feeling now is — though per- 
haps it may not often find distinct utterance — 
that religion has lost something of its importance, — 
that it is of right a less engrossing interest than 
formerly, — that its claims should be pressed more 
modestly than they used to be, — in fine, that from 
a primary it has become a secondary concern. 



8 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



Yet there can have been no essential change. 
Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 
It is the fashion of the world, not the Sun of 
Righteousness, that shows an altered phase. As 
the unchanging stars have in one age diligent and 
painstaking observers, and in the next, it may be, 
none who devote themselves to their study; as in 
one century they are believed to govern human 
destiny, and are consulted about affairs great and 
small, and in the next, even their actual uses may 
be ignored, — so does Christ, always occupying the 
same unapproached eminence, hold a more or less 
prominent place in the regard of different genera- 
tions, he and his religion at some epochs, standing 
in the foreground of men's thoughts and interests, 
and at some, almost crowded out of life by the 
pressure of secular excitement. 

Ours, as I have intimated, is not a religious 
age. One chief reason for this unfortunate dis- 
tinction is the inrush, the avalanche of worldly 
interests through the progress of art and science, 
especially through the agency of steam and electro- 
magnetism, giving us more to learn, to discuss, to 
hope, to fear, and often to do in a week than 
would have sufficed for a year of the slower life of 
the last century. It is the tendency of each indi- 
vidual to fall into the general habit of thought 
and feeling, and thus to regard religion as of the 
less importance because it has lost something of 
its former hold on the public mind. 



RELIGION UNCHANGING IN ITS CLAIMS. 9 



Wishing to render my last opportunity of ad- 
dressing those who are going from us of substan- 
tial service, — desirous of discharging an office, not 
of mere form, but of sincere and heart-felt friend- 
ship for a Class with which my connection will 
leave with me the most grateful and happy re- 
membrances, I propose vindicating for religion its 
foremost place in your thought and resolution, in 
your purposes and plans of life. 

1. Take first into the account your personal 
well-being. If you were going hence to lead quiet, 
secluded lives, I know that you would look to 
religion as a fit solace for your retirement ; cut off 
from the world, you would not willingly live as 
orphans, but would rejoice to say, "I am not 
alone; for my Father is with me." But in the 
busy, crowded life in which most of you will find 
yourselves immersed, is not the soul as truly a 
hermit as it would be in a cloister? What has 
the whole outside world to do with your self- 
consciousness? When you ask, "What am I com- 
pared with what I ought to be? What have I 
of mind or heart that should make me happy?" 
do any answers reach you by railway, steam or 
telegraph? Do any accessions of inward wealth 
accrue to you from the multitude of affairs with 
which you are complicated? When you come to 
yourself in the night-watches, when introspection 
shall be forced upon you by illness or grief, or 
when, standing by the open graves of your co- 



10 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



evals, you must think of your own death-hour, 
will you have any less need of conscious integrity 
and purity, of the pledged pardon of God for your 
sins, of the clear light of immortality made mani- 
fest, of the truths and hopes that flow from Jesus 
Christ, than is felt by the forsaken widow or the 
lonely octogenarian? 

But you say, "I live so fast; I have such a 
pressure of engagements ; new scenes and interests 
open so rapidly, that I can find no place for serious 
thought." Yet this crowded life is full of duties 
and responsibilities, — aye, of temptations too. You 
do not want to make shipwreck of your well-being, 
to become cheap in your own esteem, to lose your 
soul, or all that gives it dignity as a soul ; and tell 
me, is there in your multiplied engagements any 
influence which has power to enforce the right, to 
impress your conscience with a profound sense of 
obligation, to make you dutiful and faithful? Or, 
rather, are there not influences of an opposite 
character? Are there not temptations of vast 
strength growing out of the busy life to which 
you are looking forward? Is there not intense 
need of force from within to repel these tempta- 
tions, to neutralize these influences ? And is there 
anything that can be of avail for this end, short of 
that consummate flowering and fruitage of Chris- 
tian faith which is witnessed when the soul says, 
" My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it 
go; as for me, I will serve the Lord?" 



RELIGION UNCHANGING IN ITS CLAIMS. 11 



In fine, you cannot pursue any line of reflec- 
tion, on which you can fail to admit that character 
is essential to your well-being, or on which you 
can derive such a character as you would rejoice 
in, from any source other than Christian faith and 
piety. Though the whole world beside were in- 
different to Christ, he is the same to you as if 
all the world followed him. Your individual well- 
being is conditioned on your relation to him, and 
it has no other necessary condition. I know not, 
I care not, whether David was a poor shepherd- 
boy, looking up from the hillside on which his 
flock was feeding, to the stars and to Him whose 
palace they gem, or whether he was a monarch 
immersed in countless cares, when he sang, " Whom 
have I in heaven but thee ? and there is none on 
earth that I desire beside thee," — the relation to 
God which these words imply is a truth wholly in- 
dependent of time and of circumstance, — the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever, to you, to me, and 
to all men. 

2. I have spoken of your personal well-being. 
I would speak also of your social obligations; and 
on you especially may I urge them, — on you whom 
society has made so largely her beneficiaries, — on 
you who have enjoyed means of culture accumula- 
ted from the hard-wrung gifts of New England's 
early penury and the princely endowments of her 
palmy days, — on you to whom so much has been 
freely given by man, no less than by God, and to 



12 



BACCALAUBEATE SEBMONS. 



whom your generation looks that you should ren- 
der back a due return for the bounty of which you 
have been the recipients. On you, if on any, rests 
in full the duty of usefulness. But let me put to 
you the direct question, — Do you know of any 
mode of usefulness which is not Christian in its 
spirit and purpose, and in which you do not need 
Christian motives to prompt, guide and sustain 
you? Thus, you will be useful, most of all by 
your example. But how? Do I not utter the 
whole truth when I say that your example will be 
salutary just so far as you practise the precepts of 
Jesus, — bad and pernicious, just so far as you de- 
part from them ? In making your example what 
it should be, you will encounter temptations so 
strong that neither your native force of character, 
nor any stress of lower motives, can resist them, — 
which you will be able to overcome only by 
bracing yourself back against an assured faith in 
immortality, the sense of the present God, and the 
paramount desire for his approval. There will be 
many occasions on which you will feel the need of 
omnipotent motives. As regards that rigid up- 
rightness, fidelity and diligence, by which alone 
you can so fill your part in life as to profit those 
among whom you dwell, is there any force always 
active, always sufficing, always on the right side, 
except the thought that you are doing God's work, 
beneath "the great Taskmaster's eye," and under 
his inevitable law of retribution? How is every 



RELIGION UNCHANGING IN ITS CLAIMS. 13 



generous impulse energized, and the whole power 
of usefulness enhanced, when you feel that you 
are not your own, that you are redeemed by the 
precious blood of the great Sacrifice, and that in 
all you do for others, you are but rendering back 
such fragmentary instalments as an insolvent can 
pay of a debt absolutely infinite ! Now, this entire 
apparatus of usefulness is not of more value at one 
time than at another ; it is part and parcel of the 
religion, the Gospel, the love of Christ, and, like 
him, the same yesterday, to-day and forever. 

3. Again, when I remember that you have 
already been bereaved; when I reflect that it 
would be almost without precedent should your 
Class appear for the first time without stars in the 
Triennial Catalogue, I ought to remind you that 
death levels all distinctions, not only of social 
standing, but equally of ages and conditions in the 
world's history. It is the same event now that 
men ignore it till it steals upon them, that it was 
when it was kept perpetually in view, when it was 
the unvarying theme of pulpit, and social gather- 
ing, and lonely thought, and when, under sombre 
religious ministrations, and the deep gloom which 
they spread over the community, there were multi- 
tudes, " who through fear of death were all their 
lifetime subject to bondage." I confess that, in 
every worldly point of view, death looks terrible 
to me. This is so good and happy a world; every 
day brings with it so much to be enjoyed ; there 



14 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



are so many unsolved problems in which I am 
deeply interested, in the nearer and more remote 
future ; there are so many mines of literature and 
science which I long to explore; there is so much 
work that stretches out, in my desire, beyond the 
limits of an ante-diluvian pilgrimage, — that it 
sometimes seems to me a thought full of unutter- 
able melancholy, that I have passed the meridian of 
my earthly being, and am hastening down the 
western slope of my brief day, — to what ? To an 
eternal sleep? To be as if I had never been? I 
cannot say positively from the analogies of nature. 
Nor does the nineteenth century, with its boastful 
civilization, possess a single extra-Christian argu- 
ment for immortality which was not at the com- 
mand of that greatest philosopher of antiquity 
who said, " As to a matter about which there is so 
much uncertainty, it does not become us to be too 
confident." Only one star of hope shines over the 
grave, even that which shone over the manger of 
Bethlehem. He who there slept on the virgin 
mother's bosom alone has abolished death, and 
tracked the path of living light through the valley 
of its shadow. 

The busy, care-cumbered life to which you will 
go forth changes not in the least the aspect of 
death, though it may make you unaware of its 
surely advancing footsteps. Jesus alone transfig- 
ures it, so that you may look into the face that has 
been worn by the King of Terrors as if it were an 



RELIGION UNCHANGING IN ITS CLAIMS. 15 



angel's countenance. So long, then, as you are in 
the great procession that moves ever on from clust 
to dust, the indifference of those around you can- 
not make it of one whit the less momentous 
importance that you verify, each for himself, those 
words of the Lord, "He that believeth in me shall 
never die." While death reigns over all, Jesus, 
the Conqueror of death, is the same yesterday, to- 
day, and forever. 

I have thus sought to commend to you the 
only foundation for your well-being and usefulness 
in life, — for your hope in death. 

As you leave us, I cannot but feel the profound- 
est interest in your future. I cannot but desire the 
more earnestly for you the best gifts of mind and 
heart, when I reflect on the condition of our country, 
so sadly changed from that to which you might rea- 
sonably have looked forward at the beginning of 
this academic year. If the country in- her union 
and prosperity claimed the honor and loA^e of the 
youth whom she had nurtured, much more does she 
now, betrayed, distracted, imperilled, demand the 
loyal and devoted service which is her need no 
less than her right. Some of your number are al- 
ready pledged to the defence of her flag. Should 
her exigencies demand a like sacrifice of all the 
flower of her youth and the pride of her strength, 
I trust that those who go from these halls will not 
be behind the foremost at her call ; but at present, 
and in any aspect of the future that now seems 



16 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



probable, I should hesitate to urge this mode of 
service upon those whose special training has not 
been for the arts of war, but for the highest places 
and duties of peaceful life. In the dilapidation of 
all our dearest home-interests that must attend the 
conflict while it lasts, there is a stronger demand 
than ever for fresh vigor and uncorrupt integrity 
in such professions as lie open before you, in such 
trusts as must soon be given to your charge. 
While the war-fiend wastes, be it yours to 
strengthen that which remains, and to build up 
that which falls to decay. Vigorous minds and 
earnest, loyal hearts are demanded at the bar, 
where rights endangered in the general straitness 
and distress shall plead for recognition ; by the 
bed of illness, where many a worn and weary spirit 
will weigh down the suffering frame ; in the pul- 
pit, whence must go forth at once co isolation for 
the depressed, the anxious and the bereaved, and 
the trumpet-tones of Christian patriotism for those 
struggling beneath the public burdens ; in all the 
higher departments of social life which will afford 
fewer posts of lettered ease than before, but only 
the larger sphere for industry, energy, pure exam- 
ple and holy influence. Nor can this war, though' 
in defence of the most sacred rights, close without 
leaving in its train causes of general demoraliza- 
tion, which will work as long as you live, and will 
claim from you, as educated men, as rightfully 
succeeding to high places in the public confidence, 



BELIGION UNCHANGING IN ITS CLAIMS. 17 

the loftiest type of personal virtue, — loyalty to 
your God no less than to your country. 

Such is your calling, and you can meet it, only 
as inspired and energized by the everlasting Gos- 
pel, — by the strength and love of the Redeemer, — 
by Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and 
forever. 

I now bid you farewell, in the solemn import 
of the word. Your well-faring depends, under 
God, on yourselves, — on your deliberate choice of 
his law and service, — on your consecration of every 
power and affection to the Father and the Saviour 
of your souls. With this you will, you must fare 
well. Perhaps not by any worldly standard. Some 
may prosper visibly; some may seem to fail. But 
in the pursuit of the supreme end of your being, 
there is no failure. On this career loss is gain, 
disappointment is success, death is life. 

Accept with my farewell the warm expression 
of my sincere regard for you, and of my interest in 
you, individually and as a Class. May the . Lord 
bless you and keep you ! May His guardian Prov- 
idence and His guiding Spirit go with you on your 
life-path ! May He make you blessings to those 
among whom He shall appoint your service, and 
blessed in your allegiance to Him, and in your 
faithfulness in all that He shall give you to do; 
and may you so acquit yourselves of your work on 
earth, that its witness shall be in heaven, and its 
record on high ! 



IT. 

STABILITY, THE CONDITION OF EXCEL- 
LENCE. 

(1862.) 

" Unstable as water, thon shalt not excel."— Genesis xlix. 4. 

This text unites two ideas that at first thought 
might seem mutually incompatible, — stability and 
progress ; for to excel implies progress. It makes 
the latter, indeed, contingent on the former, — pro- 
gress or excellence on stability. But stability, as 
applied to mind and character, does not denote im- 
mobility ; it excludes only the movement which is 
not progress. It cuts steps in the solid rock on 
the ascending way of truth and goodness, and 
plants the feet firmly in those last made till still 
higher steps are cut deep enough for a secure foot- 
hold. It does not discard old opinions because 
they are old, but only because they are proved 
false, which they seldom are ; for the mind grows, 
for the most part, not by the rejection of estab- 
lished opinions, but by the development from them 
of higher, larger, more comprehensive views. 

It is by the stable minds and characters of each 
successive generation that the collective mind and 
conscience advance toward maturity. The strong 



STABILITY, THE CONDITION OF EXCELLENCE. 19 



intellects and noble hearts of each generation re- 
main, with few exceptions, loyal adherents to the 
best views, the highest principles, the nearest ap- 
proximate truths of their early maturity. They 
in their youth and prime are pioneers in the on- 
ward movement toward the ground which they are 
the first to occupy ; while in after-life they exer- 
cise the no less important function of repressing 
precipitancy, moderating excess, tempering extreme 
opinions and measures, and keeping the old way- 
marks erect and visible till the new are fully estab- 
lished and recognized. Thus the engineers and 
firemen of one generation become brakemen for 
the next, and were it not for their agency the on- 
ward rush would be destruction, not progress. 
But I cannot now follow out this train of thought, 
which at another time we might pursue with in- 
terest and profit. 

The occasion invites to considerations more 
closely personal. You who are about to leave us 
have various careers in view, but you have one 
desire in common, — that of excelling, that is, of 
success and honor in your respective professions 
and vocations. I would now present to you sta- 
bility as the essential condition of your well-being 
and well-doing. " Unstable as water, thou shalt 
not excel." The most brilliant talents, without 
fixed opinions, principles, and purposes, will only 
make your failure the more complete and disas- 
trous. I can, then, perform no better service for 



20 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



you than to define some of the traits of that sta- 
bility of character which will insure your excel- 
lence. 

I would, first, urge upon you the intense im- 
portance of fixed religious convictions. I do not 
here refer to the technical dogmas which divide 
sect from sect, but to those primal truths which lie 
at the basis of the religious character. I would 
not have you to understand that I even suspect 
the existence among you of what commonly bears 
the name of infidelity. But there is a practical 
infidelity, which, so far as its influence on the life 
is concerned, is not less to be dreaded than the 
express denial of religious truth. There is a state 
of mind, in which this entire realm of thought is 
ignored, relegated into some uncertain future, — 
in which the soul says to itself, — "Here is this 
outward, visible system of things, in which I know 
that I live, in which I must make my way by my 
genius, industry, or good fortune, and whose prizes 
may elude my pursuit if I loiter for one moment 
on the race. As for the ideal region of Christian 
faith, it will be time enough for me to enter upon 
it when I have made sure of my position in the 
actual world." What I would have you do is to 
reverse these conceptions of the ideal and the 
actual. Your earthly future may be all ideal, and 
at best only a small portion of what it is in your 
imagination can ever be realized. But religion 
deals only with realities ; it has no place except in 



STABILITY, THE CONDITION OF EXCLLLENCE. 21 

the actual world. If God is, his being is not an 
abstract and remote truth, but the nearest and 
most vital fact of your own being. He exists not, 
without standing in more intimate relations to you 
than any one of his creatures can hold. If he is 
filling for you the cup of gladness and hope that 
you lift hourly to your lips without lowering its 
level, if he feeds the gladness of your youth, and 
hangs upon your life-tree these blossoms of rich 
promise which already in your thought are ripen- 
ing into golden, luscious fruit, then must gratitude 
to him be the foremost of all duties, and it cannot 
be innocently intermitted or scanted. If he has 
in Jesus Christ uttered counsel and warning, 
promised forgiveness and help, thrown around you 
the arms of everlasting love, then is loyalty to 
your Saviour an obligation which you have no 
right to set aside. And if the law of eternal retri- 
bution works upon you independently of your own 
choice, so that every successive present moment 
projects its light or its shadow into the far-off 
future, it is high time that you were living for 
that inevitable future. 

Be not, then, satisfied with the vague assent to 
the truths of religion, which indeed is not an 
assent, so much as a waiving of the whole subject ; 
but let me beseech you to fix these truths in your 
hearts as inseparable elements of your conscious- 
ness. Hardly will you have gone from these walls, 
when the great life-questions will begin to press 



22 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



themselves upon you, — questions to which, as mere 
citizens of this world, you will give entirely differ- 
ent answers from those which you will give as 
God's children, as Christ's disciples, as heirs of 
immortality. You stand "at the parting of the 
way, where the two ways meet," whence they 
diverge, imperceptibly at first, but surely and 
rapidly, and will almost meet but to part again at 
the right and the left hand of Him who will judge 
the world in righteousness. 

In urging upon you the necessity of fixed re- 
ligious opinions, I cannot forget that at the present 
time loose and vague views with regard to the 
sources of truth, the authority of the Christian 
Scriptures, and even the distinctively divine char- 
acter of our Saviour, are largely prevalent among 
persons who still call themselves Christians. But, 
with your liberal culture, you have no right to 
such views. The flimsy naturalism which seeks 
shelter under the Christian name, yet disclaims 
the authority of Jesus, and assigns to him barely 
an honored place among the good men and wise 
teachers of antiquity, is as irrational as it is irrev- 
erent; while, on moral grounds, open, bold infi- 
delity is immeasurably preferable to it, as being 
the honest, manly profession of an open enemy, not 
the treachery, the hypocritical kiss, the stab in the 
dark, of a secret foe. The question of Christianity 
has but two sides. The religion of the New Testa- 
ment expressly claims to be received as a divine 



ST A BILITY, THE CONDITION OF EXCELLENCE. 23 

revelation; and if it is not this, it can be nothing 
else than a base imposture. If you will try the 
issue between these, the only tenable hypotheses, 
by the laws of evidence which you regard as valid 
„ on all other subjects, I know that you will say 
with the apostle who remained faithful when 
others went away from Jesus, "Lord, to whom 
shall we go ? thou hast the words of eternal life. 
And we believe, and are sure, that thou art that 
Christ, the Son of the living God." A heavier 
calamity cannot rest on a human being than is in- 
volved in the rejection of divine revelation ; for it 
is an abandonment of the soul, in all its vast, its 
infinite concerns, to its own native ignorance and 
helplessness, — a condition in which I see not how 
one could either wish to live or dare to die. But 
I fear this for you only in the event of your re- 
signing the exercise of your own powers of thought, 
and yielding yourselves passively to speculations 
which have not even anything new about them, 
except the anomalous position of those who give 
them currency, as professed disciples of Him whose 
power over the hearts of men they are seeking to 
destroy. I say " not anything new " ; for the pre- 
tentious scepticism of our time is barely the 
furbishing of weapons that have been long ago 
broken and blunted by the impregnable shield of 
faith, and of defensive armor that has been riddled 
through and through by the sword of the Spirit. 
The world has no more outgrown Christianity 



24 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



than it had eighteen centuries ago, and at this 
moment the greatest minds in existence are offer- 
ing it the same homage which the wise men of the 
East rendered to the infant Redeemer. I have 
yet to learn that infidelity or naturalism within 
the pale of Christendom has nurtured a single char- 
acter which you would wish to make your own ; 
while Christianity has trained thousands upon 
thousands whose praise you would gladly emulate. 

Above all things else, it is my earnest desire 
that you should fix your choice, and take your ir- 
revocable stand as Christians. The stable charac- 
ter can be built only on the Rock of Ages. Thus 
built, the floods of temptation will assail it in vain. 
The trials of life can only test its strength and 
minister to its growth. It will stand unmoved, 
though all the powers of earth and hell conspire 
to subvert it. It will stand when the river of 
death sweeps over it, and from a humble earthly 
structure, erected with toil and care, it will tower 
into " a building of God, a house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." 

In the next place, I would have your stability 
insured by fixed moral principles. I would have 
you feel that right and wrong are not questions of 
chronology or geography, but the same for every 
country and age, — inherent distinctions in the 
Divine mind, in the moral universe, in the essential 
nature of things, and the character and tendency of 
actions. What is termed in the most superficial 



STABILITY, THE CONDITION OF EXCELLENCE. 25 



sense a good character, essential as it is, is of far 
less vital moment at the entrance into life than is 
the possession of fixed and inflexible principles. 
A (so-called) good character is sometimes a mere 
parasitic growth, with no root of its own, and con- 
sequently incapable of living by itself. I appre- 
hend that it is no uncommon thing for one to 
derive his notions of right, not from his own con- 
science, but from the average standard of his inti- 
mate associates. He has no moral opinions or pre- 
ferences of his own, but wishes and means to stand 
well in the estimation of others. He who goes out 
into the world with no higher principle than this, 
even though he have as yet formed no vicious 
habits, is in imminent peril. His chameleon type 
of morality must sooner or later almost inevitably 
come into contact with a degraded state of moral 
opinion and practice, and cannot but receive its 
foul and sooty impress. A circle of unscrupulous 
fellow-students or fellow-travellers, the companions 
of a single ocean-passage, a sojourn of a few weeks 
among the more corrupt portion of reputedly res- 
pectable society in a great city or at a fashionable 
watering-place, will suffice to efface whatever sem- 
blance of virtue he once had ; and the cry of in- 
dignant surprise will go forth at the sudden dilapi- 
dation and ruin of so excellent a character, when 
in fact there was no structure to be dilapidated, 
no beauty or excellence to be ruined, his seeming 
goodness was in no sense his own, and he was like 



26 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



a city broken down and without walls, open to the 
inroad of whatever enemy might seek a lodgement 
there. 

Be it yours to listen, each for himself, to the 
voice and will of God, to search for the waymarks 
of duty, and to choose such principles as you are 
willing to abide by before the Divine tribunal, and 
to depend upon for your destiny in the unseen 
world. I would urge you also to let these prin- 
ciples cover the whole of life. Leave not any import- 
ant questions in morals to be decided as the feel- 
ing of the moment may dictate. Diminish to the 
utmost degree possible the debatable ground be- 
tween the positively right and the absolutely 
wrong. Restrict as far as you can the range of 
morally indifferent actions. And do not trust 
yourselves close upon the confines of acknowledged 
wrong and evil. Make no forays on the doubtful 
territory on which rigid moralists would forbid and 
lax moralists would license your quest of recreation 
or pleasure ; for this territory is Satan's chief 
hunting-ground, — it is here more than anywhere 
else that the Arch-enemy seeks and finds whom he 
may devour. Above all, in matters of right and 
wrong, yield to no conscience but your own, — to 
no sanction of respected example or commended 
virtue, to no authority of name or precedent. Ac- 
cept no substitute for your own sense of duty, un- 
til you find a substitute who can take your place 
before the Divine judgment-seat, and to whose 



STABILITY, THE CONDITION OF EXCELLENCE. 27 

shoulders you can transfer from your own the pen- 
alty of a violated conscience. 

Let me next exhort you to stability as regards 
your aims and plans in life. There is one aim to 
which you will infer from what I have said that I 
would assign the foremost place, namely, that im- 
plied in the Divine words, " Seek ye first the king- 
dom of God and his righteousness." Seek, first 
and chief of all, the character which shall insure 
for you the favor of God, and merit that of man, 
and let all your other plans and pursuits be deter- 
mined in subserviency to this. These words of 
the Lord would bid you, negatively, to engage in 
no pursuit, however attractive, however rich in 
worldly promise, which would tend to lower the 
tone or to enfeeble the vigor of moral principle, 
which would expose you to temptations beyond 
your strength, or which would injuriously affect 
your example and influence; and, positively, to 
select for your pursuits those in which you can get 
the most good and do the most good. 

This last is, it seems to me, the true rule for 
the choice of a profession. Nor would it restrict 
the range of your choice ; for among the profes- 
sions which a man of liberal education can honor- 
ably embrace, there is not one which may not to 
some minds meet more surely than any other the 
conditions of improvement and usefulness, — there 
is not one in which God may not be truly glorified 
and man efficiently served. 



28 BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 

With respect to your plans for the future, let 
them be formed deliberately, under a solemn sense 
of responsibility to God and to your generation, 
with sober heed to your own powers, capacities, 
and adaptations. Then, when they are formed, 
adhere to them, unmoved by transient difficulties 
or discouragements ; make your way, by the help 
of a good Providence, toward their realization; 
and remember that, once entered upon, they are 
changed or abandoned only with a sad, and often 
a wicked waste of time, of toil, and of ability for 
duty and means of usefulness, which cannot be 
wholly diverted into a new career, but must in 
great part be thrown away. " " Unstable as water, 
thou shalt not excel." " Ponder, then, the path 
of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established." 

My friends, I have thus given you the counsels 
of a friend. Receive them with whatever sanction 
may accrue to them from long observation and 
experience, and from my earnest desire for your 
well-being, success, and honor. 

Our parting this day has a peculiar sadness, 
when we think of him, so recently our head,* who 
would have dismissed you with his warm and fer- 
vent Godspeed. His farewell, — not as we had 
hoped, but as a Higher Wisdom ordered,— antici- 
pated your departure. You will take with you, I 
know, his precious and honored memory. A nobler 
specimen of that noble type of humanity, the 
* President Fulton. 



STABILITY, THE CONDITION OF EXCELLENCE. 29 

Christian scholar, where will you find? In his 
devotion to good letters, in his love of every 
worthy cause of humanity, in his genial friendli- 
ness, in his unselfish generosity, in his firmness 
and fidelity in thankless duty, in his reverent and 
devout spirit, in his loyalty to the word and will 
of God, I can only wish that the traits of his char- 
acter, as they are endeared to your regretful 
remembrance, may be reproduced in your diligent 
imitation. 

Permit me, in closing, to express, not in mere 
form, but with a fervor due to the intimate and 
happy relation in which we have stood together, 
my sincere and affectionate regard. May the bless- 
ing of God go with you on your respective ways in 
life. As you grow in years, may you grow in the 
strength and beauty of a true and finished man- 
hood. As you advance toward the earthly ends of 
your honorable ambition, may you with equal step 
move on toward favored places in the heavenly 
hierarchy. May you so pass through the disci- 
pline of the things that are seen and temporal, that 
you shall have your reward and joy in the things 
that are unseen and eternal. And when all of 
earth that has not been moulded into character or 
shaped into forms of usefulness shall go down with 
you to the grave, may you be awakened from the 
death-slumber by the voice that shall say to you, — 
"Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you from the foundation of the world." 



III. 



THE CHRISTIAN ORDER OF NOBILITY. 

(1864.) 

" What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know here- 
after" . — John xiii. 7. 

Jesus had just been performing a menial office 
for his disciples, — had washed their feet as they 
were about to sit down at the paschal supper, — a 
service usually performed before supper by a hire- 
ling or a slave. Peter objects to being thus served 
by his Master, and says, in earnest deprecation, 
" Lord, dost thou wash my feet ? " Jesus replies, 
" What I do thou knowest not now, — thou canst 
not yet comprehend the significance of this act of 
mine ; but thou wilt know in after time, and wilt 
deem it thy highest privilege and joy to do like- 
wise." 

This act of Christ was a revolutionary act. It 
was utterly opposed to pre-existing notions, and 
was designed to subvert them. There lived not 
then the man who knew what it meant ; there are 
thousands upon thousands now who live only to 
embody its meaning. It then seemed servile ; it 
now seems regal. Peter then felt that he could 



THE CHRISTIAN ORDER OF NOBILITY. 31 

never stoop so low; the Peters of our time — 
earnest, aspiring, energetic disciples— feel that they 
can never rise so high. 

In fine, this act of J esus established a new style 
and order of nobility, — that of the great servants. 
Before, greatness had for its aim and token the 
acquisition or appropriation of wealth, title, power, 
service, or whatever else might be the foremost 
object of desire ; and the greatest man was he who 
could most efficiently make others tributary to 
himself. Since, greatness has had for its aim and 
token self-privation, self-renunciation, the bestow- 
ment of all that one has and is for the good of his 
brethren; and he is the greatest who has the 
largest, the most affluent nature to spend and 
sacrifice for his race, and the most fervent desire 
to coin his whole being into uses and services. 

A moment's reflection will show you how 
entirely, in this respect, Jesus has made all things 
new, though the renovation has been slow. Re- 
view the series of prolonged and extended wars 
from the dawn of history almost to our own time, 
and you can recall as identified with each of them, 
and thus transmitted to enduring fame, certain 
names of heroes — manslayers, besiegers of cities, 
master-destroyers — for whose behoof no less than 
for whose praise armies have been sacrificed and 
countries laid waste. Who we^e the heroes of the 
Crimean War, — for its magnitude, its darings, its 
endurings, its brilliant and disastrous epochs, one 



32 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



of the most eventful wars in all history ? Can you 
recall their names without a painful effort of recol- 
lection? Is there one among those names that 
will be transmitted as illustrious even to the next 
generation? But that war has its heroine, who 
has borne off all its laurels, — the founder of the 
sisterhood of mercy, the tenderly nurtured woman 
who went forth, in the spirit of the world's Re- 
deemer, to save and to bless, whose name was 
floated heavenward on the thanks and praises of 
those ready to perish, and is written for ever and 
ever in the brightness of the firmament on high. 

In the conflict into which we have been forced, 
though there are those of the fallen and of the 
surviving who will be held in reverent and grate- 
ful memory, will live in history, and be deemed 
great in coming ages, they have their glory, not as 
destroyers, but as preservers, — not for what they 
sought, but for what they sacrificed, — not as soldiers, 
but as patriots, — not because they were command- 
ers, leaders, office-bearers, but because they made 
themselves the very chief of servants. Yet even 
their exalted fame will be rivalled, if not trans- 
cended, by that of the ministering angels in camp 
and battle-field and hospital, whose offices of pure 
evangelic mercy have wooed back hope for those 
from whom hope seemed fled forever, have soothed 
the agony of ebbing life with all of a mother's ten- 
derness, and borne up to heaven on the strong 
prayer of faith the spirits of the dying. 



THE CHRISTIAN ORDER OF NOBILITY. 33 

Can there be a better lesson than our text sug- 
gests for those who claim our special interest to- 
day ? You, my friends, go hence, one and all, I 
trust, with a generous ambition, — with the desire, 
not to supplant, but to excel, — not to snatch prizes 
from others, but to win and wear honor in careers 
on which none can fail who do not deserve to fail. 
Such is the career opened by our Saviour, and 
hallowed by his footprints, — that of great servants. 
It is a field of endeavor in which there is no un- 
friendly emulation, in which there is room for all, 
need of all, glory for all, conscious and almost 
always manifest reward and blessedness on earth, 
and at the gate of heaven the greeting, " Well done, 
good and faithful servant ; enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." 

Let me now ask your attention to some of the 
services due from the educated men of our age and 
land. 

I. As educated men, you are bound to com- 
mend liberal tastes and pursuits by the grace and 
beauty of your own characters. Learning may be 
made repulsive or attractive, according as it is 
merely received by the intellect and lodged in the 
memory, or digested, assimilated, and utilized. In 
the former case, it is neither culture, knowledge, 
nor wisdom ; and there have been prodigies of 
learning who have been at the same time prodigies 
of boorishness, ignorance, and folly, nuisances and 



34 BACCALAUBEATJE SEBMOJSTS. 



stumbling-blocks in the paths of erudition, fungous 
excrescences upon the surface of the society which 
ought to have been adorned by the flowering and 
nourished by the fruitage of their genius. 

Some men take in learning beyond their 
capacity of stowage, and it lumbers and clogs the 
mental passages, impedes the processes of the in- 
tellect, dulls the discernment, makes the mind 
heavy and slow, and in its separate items is never 
at hand when needed, but tumbles from the pen or 
the lips out of shape, out of place, out of season. 
Learned men of this order — the Bentleys and Por- 
sons — are the reproach and scandal of scholarship. 
They are so far out of gearing with the living 
world, that their attainments can hardly be made 
to subserve any important office in the progress of 
knowledge, literature, or science. At the same 
time their moral development is generally as un- 
graceful and faulty as their style of intellectual 
character. Conscious of large attainments, pain- 
fully aware that they are unappreciated, and 
wholly ignorant of the reasons why they forfeit 
the favor of society, they become morose and surly ; 
they present a porcupine aspect to the surround- 
ing world, and are very Ishmaelites in their rela- 
tions to their fellow-men. 

But learning, made one's own by the vigorous 
action of the reflective powers, enters into the 
soul's life-blood; softens and sweetens the man- 
ners ; refines and exalts the tastes ; imparts 



THE CHRISTIAN ORDER OF NOBILITY. 



35 



weight and dignity to the character ; makes 
the speech pure, rich, and strong ; fits the scholar 
for his lifework by his conversance with the root 
and essence of things ; inspires him with equal 
prudence and vigor in action ; gives aim and end 
to his endeavor; and places him in kindly and 
beneficent relations with all around him. 

Learning, thus incorporated into the being, is 
second only to religion as a moral force. It makes 
its possessor modest and humble ; for he owns and 
feels its limits and its imperfections, and in the 
desire and effort for larger attainments he regards 
himself as but a learner and a novice in the ratio 
of his advancement and proficiency. At the same 
time, these lofty pursuits can hardly fail so to 
occupy thought, sentiment, and feeling as to ex- 
clude low passions and appetites, sordid avarice 
and mean ambition, and to make the life sober, 
chaste, generous, and faithful. 

Such scholars you are called to be. Remember 
that it is not mass of acquisition, but quantity of 
character, that you need, — not learning, but wis- 
dom, and learning, only that it may be transmu- 
ted into wisdom, — dead tongues, that they may 
give grace and flexibility to your living speech, — 
history, that it may furnish precedents, examples, 
warnings, for the time in which your lot is cast, — 
the philosophy of mind, that you may know your- 
selves and use your powers, — natural science, that 
God's creation around you may speak to you in a 



36 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



known language, — mathematical laws and propor- 
tions, that you may read the Divine ordinances in 
earth and sea and sky and stars. 

By such culture you make yourselves among 
the very chief of servants. You commend good 
learning by your example. Your higher life is a 
perpetual protest against the low, grovelling utili- 
tarianism which is the curse and bane of the age. 
You draw ingenuous youth to the elevation on 
which you stand. You show that liberal pursuits 
minister to strength and beauty, to the highest 
type of manhood, to the power that both uses and 
overcomes the world. 

II. I would next speak of your duty, as edu- 
cated men, to your country. Some of you have 
already obeyed the call to her active service, and 
will be graduated with double honors in arts and 
in arms. I am reminded, too, and with saddened 
thought, that not all have returned, that you have 
laid your costly, precious sacrifice on the altar of 
patriotism, and that death in the cause so dear and 
sacred leaves only cherished memories of the 
gifted, beloved, and tenderly lamented, whose un- 
seen presence deepens the solemnity of your part- 
ing hour. So long as the country still needs for 
her defence those who are her pride and hope, I 
can only bid a fervent Godspeed to such of you as 
may serve her in the camp and field. But she has 
other — I will not say higher, but more enduring — 
claims on those who should be her leading minds. 



THE CHRISTIAN ORDER OF NOBILITY. 37 

There lies before us a work of reconstruction, in 
which, you must bear your part. 

Strained to the utmost tension in the stress of 
need, our body politic may find itself, in victory 
even, collapsed and nerveless. We shall retire 
from the conflict a reunited people, I trust, through 
the good providence of God, but with our indus- 
trial, commercial and financial interests disordered 
and deranged, and not without many of those de- 
moralizing influences which follow in the train 
even of the most necessary and righteous war. It 
will be your part, in your several spheres of ser- 
vice, to study the public good; to be vigilant and 
energetic as citizens ; to weigh well the measures 
which may be helped or hindered by your action; 
to aid in the elevation of capable, just, God-fearing 
men to places of trust and power; to give the 
whole weight of your example in behalf of the fru- 
gality which alone can restore what war has 
wasted, the temperance and soberness which alone 
can commend our people to the blessing of Heaven, 
the integrity and loyalty in public and private life 
which alone can transmit the blessedness of our 
free institutions to the coming age, and make 
them the cynosure of liberty to all lands and 
nations. 

In the positions which most or all of you will 
occupy, you must have wide and enduring influ- 
ence. Your passiveness and indifference as citi- 
zens will paralyze action around you. Your self- 



38 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



seeking and time-serving will corrupt public opinion 
in a larger sphere than you mean or know. Your 
pure and conscientious discharge of every function 
that may devolve upon you, whether of suffrage, 
speech, pen, or official station, will multiply and 
extend itself, not only among those with whom you 
are intimately associated, but from numerous cen- 
tres of influence which lie within your respective 
circles. It is a responsibility which you cannot 
evade or disown, and which will grow constantly 
with every stage of your success and advancement. 
God has given you your nurture under the best 
government the world has ever seen ; thank him 
for it by such patriotic service and devotion as 
only the highly privileged can render. 

III. Including all other services, and essential 
to their consistency and their effectual working, is 
the service demanded of you in the religious con- 
secration of your hearts and lives. On you as 
scholars religion has peculiar claims. 

It might be pardoned to those who are con- 
stantly occupied with the most paltry material 
interests, if there were not in them a sufficiently 
clear spiritual self-consciousness to commend to 
their contemplation themes appertaining to the in- 
ward life. It would be venial, too, if those unused 
to reasoning or to research, incapable of following 
fallacy or sophistry through its windings, were be- 
juggled and bewildered by the assumptions and the 
casuistry of infidelity or naturalism, if a sneer 



THE CHRISTIAN OBJDEB OF NOBILITY. 39 

against the Bible sometimes had with them the 
force of an argument, if some cavil at an obscure 
Old Testament narrative seemed to them destruc- 
tive of the entire historical basis of Christianity. 

But you have no such apology. You have 
been trained in the use of argument, — in the exer- 
cise of reason. You know, or can know, how to 
search into th£ evidences of the Christian faith ; to 
test the strength of its foundations ; to judge of 
the marks of Divine or human workmanship in 
its superstructure ; to determine for yourself 
whether it bears tokens of fraud or truth, of delu- 
sion or reality, of myth or miracle, of development 
from man's brain or of revelation from the infinite 
God, of earthly or of heavenly parentage. You 
have no right to remain in doubt. If thorough 
investigation make you unbelievers, I judge you 
not; but if you become so by reading, hearing, 
and speculating on the negative side, and ignoring 
all that may be urged in the affirmative, you do 
with the most momentous of all subjects what you 
would not risk your reputation by doing with any 
other subject, however insignificant in magnitude 
or ephemeral in interest. But I have no fear for 
the result of honest inquiry. If Christianity be 
divine, it cannot fail to vindicate its divinity to 
every diligent seeker after the truth. 

You, too, as educated men, live not on the low 
sensual plane on which persons destitute of cul- 
ture must habitually dwell, Yours is, or ought 



40 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

to be, a life of thought, sentiment, reflection. And 
can there be any apology for excluding or slight- 
ing those noblest themes of thought that belong 
to the essence, the Author, the destiny of your 
being, — those highest sentiments that appertain to 
the realm of spiritual existence, — those loftiest 
subjects of reflection which embrace the infinite 
and the eternal ? No. Your culture makes these 
contemplations your duty no less than your privi- 
lege. If Christianity is God-born, you, by remain- 
ing aliens from its faith and joy, are at once reject- 
ing God's best gifts, and pouring scorn on the 
Giver. 

But while for your own sake I cannot urge 
these sacred themes too earnestly upon your re- 
gard, they equally belong to you as the trained 
chief servants of your generation. Remember that 
the excellence of your service depends even more 
on what you are than on what you do ; — on the mass 
and momentum of your mental, moral, spiritual 
life ; on the capacity of influence with which your 
person, your words, your deeds are charged; on 
the power there is in you ; on the virtue that goes 
.forth from you. But Christian piety alone can 
give the crowning grace to your character, can 
place you beyond reach of temptation, can attach 
weight to your precept, dignity and sacredness to 
your example. You put your soul, your moral 
nature, such as it is, into whatever you are, and 
say, and do. If that soul be sensualized, materi- 



THE CHRISTIAN ORDER OF NOBILITY. 41 



alized, conversant with earthly things alone, your 
best-intended endeavors for the good of others are 
limited by the limitations of your own being. If 
that soul be enlarged, exalted, hallowed by heav- 
enly communings, by the life of God within, then 
is there a "power from on high," — an efficacy lit- 
erally Divine, — not only in what you say and do 
expressly for others, but in the mere example of 
quiet, faithful, persistent duty. You cannot be 
what God and Christ would have you be, without 
being among the very chief of servants to your 
fellow-men. 

But because as educated men you will occupy 
conspicuous places, your irreligion, your infidelity, 
your neglect of sacred times and ordinances, will 
be contagious. Sneers and scoffs at Divine truth 
from your lips will find ready currency. Loose 
notions as to religion or its records will have from 
you an authority which minds of inferior culture 
could never command. You are set, if not for the 
rise, for the falling of many ; and to the full meas- 
ure of your superior privileges must you be respon- 
sible for the souls that will often owe to you their 
noblest -or their basest impulses, their initial start-* 
ing and their vigorous progress on the path to God, 
or on the way of death. 

" For their sakes," said Jesus, " I sanctify my- 
self." "For their sakes," — for the sake of the 
many, the constantly widening circle, to whom you 
may be the source of the holiest influences, — 



42 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



sanctify yourselves, that in the resurrection-life 
there may be those who will say to you, " Ye 
helped us hither," and who will be as jewels in the 
crown of your eternal rejoicing. 

My friends, receive these counsels as the heart- 
offering of one who speaks to you lovingly and 
hopefully, — of one, too, whose years have their au- 
thority, — who has followed with the warmest sym- 
pathy successive circles of youth that have been 
under his charge into the scenes of their maturer 
cares and trusts, and who speaks of what he knows, 
testifies of what he has seen, in the solemn em- 
phasis with which he commends Christian faith 
and piety as essential to the loyal, faithful, efficient 
service of man, and of God in and through man. 

I feel a peculiar nearness of intimacy with you. 
You and I commenced our college life together ; 
and you can hardly know how solicitously I have 
watched the development and growth of character 
in those who here first came under my instruction, 
and compared each stage of the fulfillment with the 
hope and promise that you severally gave at the 
outset. 

I cannot but recall, as our parting approaches, 
him under whose presidency you entered on your 
academic career.* It was the joy of his life and 
the beauty of his character, to be among the very 
chief of servants. No one illustrated more fully 
and richly than he the beneficent influence, the ex- 
* President Fulton. 



THE CHRISTIAN ORDER OF NOBILITY. 43 



tended and cumulative power for good, at the com- 
mand of the Christian scholar. You will carry 
hence with you precious memories of his genial 
spirit, his meek wisdom, his wealth of intellect, his 
persistent firmness in the right. Let us be thank- 
ful that the dead live for our example, and speak 
for our counsel, though we see them no more till 
we meet them in heaven. 

My friends, take with you my congratulations 
on all the honor that you have worthily won, on 
all the prophecy of worth and honor that you bear 
with you from these walls to the world-wide uni- 
versity in which your training is now to be pur- 
sued ; and my most affectionate wishes for your 
well-being and well-doing. May God bless you 
and keep you. May he make you his servants for 
great and enduring good in and far beyond your 
day and generation. May he write your names to- 
gether in his book of life eternal ; and while we 
shall never all again renew our Sabbath worship 
in the same earthly sanctuary, may none be want- 
ing in our united praise and worship in the temple 
not made with hands. 



IV. 

APPROVAL AND CHOICE. 

(1865). 

" And approvest the things that are excellent." — Romans ii. 18. 
" Choose you this day whom ye will serve." — Joshua xxiv. 15. 

According to a Chinese legend, the founders 
of the three .established religions of the Celestial 
Empire, talking together in heaven of the restric- 
ted progress and influence of their doctrines, a- 
greed to revisit the earth, and see if they could 
not find some one who could be an efficient refor- 
mer and propagandist. The three sages, after 
searching in vain through town and country for 
the right person, came at length to a desert place, 
where they saw an old man sitting by a fountain. 
On their entering into discourse with him, they 
found him better versed than themselves in the 
precepts which they had promulgated when on the 
earth, and he rebuked them for having lived far 
below their own standard. But when they pro- 
posed to the old man the office of an active promo- 
ter of virtue and piety, he replied : " It is only 
the upper part of me that is of flesh and blood ; 
the lower part is of stone, I can talk about virtue, 
but cannot practise it. I approve, I admire, but 
can do nothing." In this man the sages recognized 



APPROVAL AND CHOICE. 



45 



the type of his race, and in despair of reforming 
such a world returned to heaven. 

There is a profound truth in this legend. It in- 
dicates at once the glory and the infirmity of hu- 
man nature. Man approves the right, but is feeble 
and impotent in actualizing it. But J esus Christ 
does for it what the Chinese philosophers could 
not do. He vivifies the stone ; as it softens into 
flesh, he pours into it his own life-blood ; and the 
active powers thus energized by him do what they 
approve, become what they admire. 

My friends of the graduating Class, as I address 
you collectively for the last time, I want to drop 
into your hearts some fructifying word; and I 
have thought that I could select no topic more ap- 
propriate to your present position than approval 
and choice, considered in their relations to char- 
acter. I want to discriminate carefully between 
them ; for they are often confounded, though 
heaven-wide apart, and it is mainly because we 
confound them that our self-esteem is so apf to 
transcend the tavor in which we are held by God 
and man. We judge ourselves by what we ap- 
prove ; they judge us by what we choose. The 
self-complacency of youth is sustained by an hon- 
est, unsophisticated approval of all that is excel- 
lent ; the follies, failures, and sins- of maturer years 
grow from the choice of what the judgment cannot 
approve. 

You are at this moment unanimous as to your 



46 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



moral judgments. Were I to rehearse to you all 
the precepts of our Saviour's Sermon on the 
Mount, there is not one of them to which you would 
not, every one of you, give cordial and unqual- 
ified assent. You hold in the highest esteem all 
the traits of Christian excellence, — all the strength 
and beauty of holiness embodied in the life of 
Jesus Christ upon the earth. Of his character in 
its entireness you would say with one voice, " All 
this I ought to be and to do." And may not some of 
you trust to this pure moral taste as a sufficient 
safeguard against evil ? You, perhaps, say to your- 
selves, " The weak indulgences to which so many 
yield I heartily despise, and it is impossible that I 
should ever become their victim." Yet of the 
lost souls still on earth, and of those that have 
passed on to their account, — many of them as truly 
suicides as if they had deliberately taken their 
own lives with their own hands, — there are a very 
large proportion who have never ceased to approve 
what is excellent, whose aesthetic natures have 
recoiled with loathing from their own vices, who 
have abhorred nothing so heartily as they have 
abhorred themselves. 

I would have you aware that approval is but a 
feeble emotion; that a true and keen aesthetic 
sense as to matters of right and obligation, while it 
may enhance the beauty, can add nothing to the 
strength of character, and is always liable to be 
overborne by the appetites, the desires, the loves, 
the passions. These are the motive powers. They 



APPBOVAL AND CHOICE. 



47 



prompt the choice, govern the will, and give tone 
to the life. They determine the man's place, 
whether among nobler or baser spirits, — among 
those that are elect of God and honored of their 
brethren, or among those whose names are blotted 
from the book of life eternal. We are, not what 
we approve, but what we choose. Let us see then 
what is involved in choice. 

In the first place, the definite choice — none the 
less real when unconfessed — of certain primary 
objects of desire or pursuit is the common habit, 
nay, the necessity of the developed and matured 
mind. The separate volitions of each passing day 
are not desultory, as they seem, but are in part 
determined, in part essentially modified, by the life- 
choice. This you are now only beginning to 
verify ; you will verify it with ever-increasing dis- 
tinctness in your consciousness and experience. 
You have hitherto been in many respects depend- 
ent on the dictation of others ; but so far as that 
dictation has been wise, its intent has been to pre- 
pare you to make a worthy choice for yourselves. 
Your intellectual training — thus far on substan- 
tially the" same curriculum — has been designed to 
furnish you materials for your judgment and 
motives for your choice, as to the aims with which 
you will start on your respective life-paths. Our 
purpose has been to lead you to an eminence from 
which you can take an intelligent survey of the 
several routes into which the way that you have 



48 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



pursued together now divides. At the same time, 
the religious instruction that you have received — 
seconded by the discipline of Providence, which 
has repeatedly opened the unseen world to your 
near vision, as the veil has been lifted for one after 
another of your classmates to pass within — has 
been directed with a view to the all-embracing, all- 
pervading, all-controlling choice, which we would 
have you make, not for time, but for eternity, — 
the choice of Jesus Christ as your Teacher, Exam- 
plar, Guide, and Saviour. The evidences of his 
Divine sonship, mission, and authority have been 
presented to you in the class-room, not as a mere 
scholastic exercise, but with the earnest desire that 
you should hear and obey the voice which once 
spake on earth and ever speaks from heaven. 
Here too, and in your other places of worship, the 
unceasing endeavor of those who have spoken to 
you in the Lord's name has been to elicit your 
response to the call of God, " My son, give me thy 
heart." As you select your respective aims, — 
above all, as you make the great life-choice of the 
service of God, or that of earthly gain, fame, or 
influence, your separate volitions will more and 
more group themselves as accessory around the 
main object of your desire and endeavor, — a 
large and constantly increasing proportion of them 
having its direct furtherance in view, while even 
in the avocations — the side pursuits — of society, 
recreation, or repose, this object will not be lost 



APPROVAL AND CHOICE. 



49 



from sight, but will be incidentally promoted and 
advanced. 

I would next ask you to observe, that, in order 
to an effective, persistent choice, there must be 
strong feeling, vivid emotion, enthusiasm. This is 
essential to your successful choice of a profession 
or calling. I would not have you embark on your 
life-work from cold calculation, not even from the 
deliberate estimate of your capacities and adapta- 
tions. You will never prosper unless you love 
your work. Heart and soul, no less than mind 
and strength, must be given to it. Else, whatever 
your powers, you will never rise above the lowest 
ranks and the meanest drudgery of your profession. 
If enthusiasm be not genius, it supplies the place 
and fulfils the office of genius. Some of the great- 
est men in their respective vocations have given 
little early promise ; but because they loved their 
work, it soon glowed under their hands, — their 
dulness became brilliancy, their awkwardness skill, 
their stammering eloquence. 

But if this be the law of all the higher walks 
of earthly business and ambition, still more is it 
the law of the religious life. No mere prudential 
virtue, no close weighing of consequences, no dread 
of perdition, makes one a saint. There must be a 
heart-choice of things that are excellent, for their 
own sake, their intrinsic beauty and loveliness. A 
preference warm and ardent, like that which sus- 
tained holy men of old in stripes and ignominy, at 



50 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



the stake and on the cross, alone can make and 
keep us loyal to duty under the no less severe con- 
flicts that we must wage with appetite and passion, 
evil example and corrupt influence. The martyr- 
spirit, — the love and pursuit of the right at all 
hazards, — is as essential to the Christian of the 
nineteenth century as it was to the Christian of 
the first ; and the dread of ridicule, or of arduous 
effort, or of transient inconvenience, or of a solitary 
position at the bidding of conscience, requires to 
overcome it no less vigor of will and fervor of 
spirit than did the dread of death when death might 
be the penalty for faith. 

I would next ask you to observe, that in every 
vigorous and persistent choice the personal element 
bears a large part. Affection or reverence feeds 
the enthusiasm that inspires generous endeavor, 
and sustains the patience which can wait for the 
slow success or the distant prize. How almost 
certain of utter failure is the misanthrope, though 
of splendid abilities I On the other hand, the 
greater the cloud of loved, sympathizing, approv- 
ing witnesses, the more earnest is the contest, the 
more sure and ample the reward. As you with 
more or less fixedness of purpose are looking for- 
ward to your respective careers, there is not one of 
you who does not feel as if he were making his 
choice for parents, kindred, and friends, no less 
than for himself ; while not a few of you may have 
been determined in the election of a calling by 



APPROVAL AND CHOICE. 



51 



fervent admiration of some illustrious man whose 
glowing footprints make that seem of all careers 
the brightest and the happiest. And would to 
heaven you might look above the amphitheatre of 
friendly forms and faces to the all-seeing eye of 
Him who claims your supreme reverence, choose 
your life-work as at His bidding, select your life- 
path as by the ordering of His providence, and 
enter on the career in which you are conscious that 
you can best serve Him by serving your fellow- 
men ! 

Here will you pardon me a digression ? I am 
grieved to find that from year to year diminished 
numbers of the graduating classes at this and our 
other New England colleges make choice of the 
Christian ministry. I would have none enter upon 
it who are not self-consecrated to God by sincere 
piety, and who do not in heart, no less than in 
theory, regard the service of their race as the 
prime end of their earthly being. But of those 
thus fitted, and endowed with powers that would 
insure their distinguished success and usefulness, an 
unduly large proportion turn aside to other, and, I 
am well convinced, less satisfying walks of duty. 
I am aware of the discouragements in this profes- 
sion, — its frail tenure of office, its inadequate com- 
pensation, the paucity of its high prizes, and the 
paltriness of even these as compared with the op- 
portunities for wealth and fame held forth on other 
careers. But with all these drawbacks, I believe 



52 BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 

that there is no life so rich in its daily revenue of 
beneficent influence, in its kindly relations and 
sympathies, in its indestructible friendships, in its 
hallowed memories, in its forecast lights from the 
reunions and the blessed society of the unseen 
world, as that of the New England parish minister. 
Had I a thousand lives to repeat, generation after 
generation, upon the earth, I can say, with what- 
ever weight the experience of more than a quarter 
of a century can give to my words, that I would, 
without a moment's hesitation, devote the prime, 
the best days of every one of these lives to this 
work. 

To return : the influence of the affections on 
every great choice in life is emphatically verified 
in the one choice which includes all others, — that 
of Christian obedience and piety. A philosophy, 
even of the unseen, of the higher principles of 
ethics, of the most recondite spiritual truths, might 
command our approval, gratify our taste, occupy 
our studious hours ; but it could not constrain 
the choice, lay its clinching grasp upon the will, 
and insure that close-clinging loyalty and love 
which would make us willing for its sake to endure 
sacrifice and suffering. Abstract truths do not 
enlist enthusiasts, self-devoted propagandists, mar- 
tyrs. Stephen would never have died for an im- 
personal creed ; but when he saw heaven opened, 
" and Jesus standing on the right hand of God," 
it was sweet to die for him. Therefore is it that 



APPROVAL AND CHOICE. 



53 



religion proffers its claims on our allegiance, through 
our affections. Its exhortation is not, "Choose 
what law ye will obey," but " Choose whom ye will 
serve." The love of God, the compassion of Christ, 
the manifestation on the cross of such tenderness 
of pity and such intensity of self-sacrifice as have 
no parallel in the world's history, — these are the 
renovating agencies through which men are brought 
from the death of sin into the new and heavenly 
life. The Gospel has done nothing for us when it 
has our mere recognition of its divinity ; its finished 
work is personal sentiment, — love, veneration, 
loyalty. It is to the intimacy of this personal feel- 
ing that Christian piety owes its strength, its 
tenderness, its power to do and to endure, its per- 
sistency, its growth. The religious sentiment which 
springs not from the love of God and of Christ, 
but which consists in the mere approval of the 
things that are excellent, in a cold assent to the 
truths of Christianity, the wisdom of its precepts, 
and the faultlessness of its Founder's example, may 
suffice for the decencies of life in the absence of 
severe temptation and sorrow ; but when the rains 
descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow, 
the only rock of safety and peace is the living, lov- 
ing Christ. Only the soul that rests on him can 
endure and overcome in the fiery trials of prin- 
ciple, in the crucial tests of character, which in one 
form or another enter into almost every experience. 
Only the soul that rests on him can meet the ap- 



54 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

proach of death in fearless triumph, assured that 
to be absent from the body is to be present with 
the Lord. 

My friends, as you enter on yet untried life- 
paths ; as you become more than ever before your 
own keepers and guides ; as the great questions of 
your earthly future claim your speedy answer ; as 
new classes of temptations, those connected with 
the various lures of worldly gain and ambition, 
assail you, — let me beg you not to rest contented 
with the approval of the things that are excellent, 
but " choose you this day whom ye will serve." 
This is for you a season of as much solemnity as 
gladness. It is one of those marked epochs of 
which there are but few in the longest life. You 
stand at the parting of the ways ; and from the 
way on which you now enter you may never have 
the will or the power to recede. Choose then, first 
of all, the way on which you will have increasing 
joy with every stage of your progress. Choose ; 
for as you choose, you are. A perfect Christian, 
indeed, you cannot become suddenly, nor, perhaps, 
ever in this world. But you can at any moment, 
you can at this moment, make the vow of allegi- 
ance to your soul's Sovereign. You can say, with 
the intensity of a resolute will, " Saviour, I am 
thine, forever thine." You can so resolve that the 
unfading record shall be entered in heaven, — 
"Henceforth God's will shall be mine, His law mine, 
His love my endeavor and my joy." This resolve, 



APPROVAL AND CHOICE. 



55 



this vow, fervently breathed, with the determina- 
tion that it shall never be recalled, makes you a 
Christian, seals your adoption into your Divine 
Master's family, sends you forth into life no longer 
your own, but His, — not orphaned and lone be- 
cause you are no more " under tutors and gover- 
nors," but absolved from human dependence for 
that service of Him which is the only perfect 
freedom. 

You need to have made this primal choice, that 
you may not err in the secondary yet momentous 
matters in which you must soon make your choice 
for life. We are wont to use with reference to 
our various professions and pursuits a profoundly 
religious word ; would to Heaven that its religious 
significance were as profoundly felt ! We speak of 
one's calling or vocation. A calling, — who calls? 
Rightfully, only He whose word should be our 
supreme law. The choice of a mode of life should 
always be obedience to the calling of God, — not, 
indeed, as the Hebrew prophets were called from 
the plough or the herd, by an audible voice from 
heaven, but often with no less distinctness and 
certainty, if we will only study God's will in our 
capacities and opportunities, in the held of duty 
around us, and in the demand for reapers which 
comes up from one or another portion of that field. 
God has his work for each of you. If you, my 
friend, in sincere faith and an obedient spirit ask, 
"Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" I know 



56 BACCALAUBEATE SEBMONS. 



that you will be guided to the very pursuit, in 
which you can do the most good, secure the great- 
est amount of happiness that can be yours in this 
world, and best prepare yourself for nobler service 
when, through the ministry of death, you shall 
have another calling to a higher sphere of duty. 

As you go hence, I trust that you will bear 
with you as pleasant memories as you leave. It is 
the misfortune of your teachers to form the most 
cordial friendships with successive classes, and 
then only to witness in the distance or to learn 
from the testimony of others the development of 
the rich promise manifested within these walls, and 
of the noble, generous traits of character which 
had made our college intercourse happy. Your 
connection with me has been on my side so pleas- 
ant, that I am sure I cannot err in addressing you 
as my personal friends; and it is not in the mere 
formality of a parting sermon, but with a warmth 
of feeling cherished by as kind mutual relations 
as can ever have subsisted between teacher and 
pupils, that I bid you a fervent Godspeed. May 
the guiding spirit of our Father go with you on 
your several ways. May you grow in favor with 
God and man, as you grow in years. May you, 
while it is yet day, work faithfully for your coun- 
try and your race ; and at nightfall, when the 
Great Taskmaster shall call his laborers home to 
give them their hire, may you have your rich 
reward in the resurrection of the just. 



V. 



MANHOOD. 

(1867). 

" Show thyself a man."— 1 Kings ii. 2. 

The prime object of a liberal education is not 
the imparting of certain kinds or degrees of knowl- 
edge, but the development of an advanced type of 
manliness, — the culture of those attributes by 
which a man may take and keep the high place 
assigned to him by his Creator, as lord of this lower 
world, and the destined heir of a far nobler inheri- 
tance hereafter. These attributes are both of 
mind and of heart. It is chiefly with the former 
that we have been concerned in our course of 
academic instruction. You are already aware, 
and will become still more so, that you have 
learned but little here. What I trust you have 
attained is the capacity of learning, the skill to find 
what you need or wish to know, and the power of 
analyzing, combining, generalizing, assimilating, 
and re-creating — in forms that bear the signature 
of your own minds — whatever you do know or 
shall know. It is not in any definite amount of 
knowledge, but in the ability to acquire and use 



58 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



knowledge, that a liberal education consists. This 
ability is the token and measure of a manly intel- 
lect, of mastership over resources, of lordship in 
the realm of mind. Of this I shall not now speak 
at length, but will content myself with urging you 
to preserve and mature your intellectual manhood, 
by giving the first place to the athletic exercise of 
the faculties, and the second, though always an 
essential place, to the accumulation of materials 
for their future use ; and with begging you to 
avoid equally a contented acquiescence in your 
present attainments, and the crowding of the 
memory beyond the capacity of orderly stowage. 

My prime object, as in accordance with the 
sacredness of the place and occasion, is to present 
some of the characteristics and the claims of that 
moral and spiritual manhood, which, while it 
breaks up the delicate lines and indents the round- 
ed proportions that mark a lower type of beauty, 
yet combines, with its strength, beauty of a far 
higher order in the knotted sinews of strenuous 
purpose, in the scars — not wound-marks, but glory- 
marks — of successful conflict, with evil, in the 
furrows ploughed by the continous, anxious endea- 
vor to comprehend the true, to embody the right, 
and to realize the good. 

In the first place, the true man regards as a 
sacred trust his own individuality; by which I 
mean those traits wherein God intended that he 
should differ from those around him, as he does in 



MANHOOD. 



59 



form and feature, — those traits which make him, 
to use a grammatical distinction, a proper and not 
a common noun, — an individual, and not a mem- 
ber of such or such classes or bodies of men. Our 
age has won the distinction of breaking down the 
barriers that used to divide nation from nation, 
and inaugurating the intercourse by steam and 
telegraph, which tends to fuse the civilized world 
into one vast and almost homogenous nationality. 
It is entitled to the less enviable distinction of 
doing more than all preceding ages toward break- 
ing down the barriers between man and man, the 
fences of individual character, the sacredness of 
private opinion, judgment, and habit. The press 
and the caucus tyrannize over one's life as a citi- 
zen, and confine his political action within limits 
as narrow, though not always as straight, as those 
which bound a railway track ; while a vote or act 
not pre-arranged by his party, even though the 
dictate of honesty, brands him with very much the 
same kind of stigma that used to attach to dis- 
honesty. In social life, fashion usurps a similar 
control ; and her dicta, emanating no one knows 
whence, yet with a sovereignty which no one dares 
to resist, are suffered to override all considerations of 
health, comfort, propriety, integrity, and religion ; 
while the dissenter, though his dissent be enforced 
by necessity, or by conscience, which ought to be 
the most cogent of necessities, is treated as a person 
excommunicate. As to moral habits, the customs 



60 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



of every community and of every circle seem a 
constraining law within its own precincts ; and 
fewer than ever before have the courage and 
energy to mark out and pursue their own higher 
path. 

It is refreshing to read the memoirs of such men 
as flourished in New England a century, or even 
half a century, ago. They bear about the same 
relation to such biographies as men, I fear, are 
preparing for themselves now, that a river bears 
to a canal, — the canal having only the tow-path, 
locks, and ports of lading, to mark its course ; 
the river winding, at its own sweet will, between 
verdant banks, now through forest, now through 
meadow, now broader, now narrower, then doub- 
ling upon itself, and presenting at every turn new 
types and groupings of scenery. By this merging 
of individualities, none can deny that life, both 
acted and written, is losing all of its picturesque 
elements. 

But what concerns us here is the moral sacrifice 
occasioned by this lack of independence. By every 
surrender of the judgment to pressure or dictation 
from without, violence is done to the moral nature ; 
a wrench is given to conscience ; there is a deterio- 
ration of principle. He who compromises his in- 
tegrity in political action, or in some matter of 
social custom, is not, as to his own private affairs, 
the man that he else would be. In matters of 
vital moment to his own soul, he is the more ready 



MANHOOD. 



61 



to sacrifice principle to expediency, to tamper with 
the right, to postpone decision and action where 
they are needed and due, to yield where he should 
control and guide. He has parted with a portion 
of his manhood, and he cannot resume it at will. 

I am inclined to believe, that this external 
pressure constitutes the greatest moral peril of 
young men. They certainly are liable to some be- 
setting sins to which they can have no internal 
temptation. For instance, no inward impulse ever 
made a well-nurtured youth a blasphemer. Such 
a one, in becoming profane in speech, must of 
necessity violate innate sentiments, deepened by 
all the influence of his earliest years and associa- 
tions, especially by all that was sacred in a 
mother's purity and love. But am I wrong in say- 
ing that in some circles of young men. profane- 
ness is the current dialect, — the shibboleth without 
which one would seem an intruder and a spy? 
This is not because any one of them doubts the 
wickedness and vileness of the habit ; but because 
no one of them has the manliness to consult his 
own conscience, and abide by it, — because every 
new member of the circle has suffered the wall 
with which God has fenced in his soul from all 
other souls to be broken down, and its stones, laid 
by no human hand, to be trampled in the mire. 

Intemperance often has a yet prior cause in 
transmitted and hereditary appetite. But where 
this cause is lacking, the first steps in the way to 



62 BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



ruin are almost always to be traced to a deficient 
manliness, to the inability to say No, to the sub- 
mission of the individual soul in that which it con- 
demns to the imperative tyranny of a custom which 
frowns on abstinence, and not infrequently on 
moderation. I could point out *fco you those no 
longer young, who, for years urged by conscience 
to resist the encroachments of this habit, and lack- 
ing only the manliness to do as they knew they 
ought, have now outlived the power of resistance, 
and, by gradations which they are the only persons 
not to mark, are lapsing from what they call gener- 
ous living into an habitual sottishness, that must 
whelm their latter years in imbecility and dis- 
honor. 

In every department of moral duty, the strong- 
est opposition that virtue encounters is from the 
fear, or shame, or self-abasement, or whatever it is, 
which makes one false to conscience and to God, 
rather than to custom and the will of man, — 
careless of his individual convictions, and eager 
only to know how others think and feel. It never 
was so true as now, that 

" Broad is the road that leads to death, 
And thousands walk together there ; " 

and, did they not "walk together," there would 
be more hope of reclaiming them. Were the 
errors of each self-born and self-nurtured, there 
would be at least room for the working of that 



MANHOOD. 



63 



gospel which addresses its appeals, and extends 
its offices, to the individual soul; but now, 
more than ever before, the individual has not an 
independent existence, an active conscience of his 
own, and he can therefore be reached only through 
the mass, influenced only through the leaven which 
works in those around him, converted only when 
they are ready to change their position with him. 
The prodigal, in our Lord's parable, did not come 
to himself in the midst of his companions; but 
only when they had stripped him of his substance, 
and left him alone, so that his individuality was 
forced back upon him. He had gone from himself 
through their influence; he came to himself when 
that influence was withdrawn. 

We need, secondly, to defend our manhood, 
not only against encroachment from without, but 
equally against our own supineness and indolence. 
The supremacy of the will over mere inclination, 
and over the fitful activity of the emotional nature, 
is an essential element of manliness. There are 
times when our life-AVork seems spontaneous, and 
therefore easy. There are other times, (and they 
are not" infrequent), when, with a clear perception 
of duty, we are conscious of coldness, sluggishness, 
and reluctance as to its performance, — of the spirit 
which cries, To-morrow, when conscience says, 
To-day and Now. While our life-work always 
burns and urges, we are often tempted to let its 
due season go by, because our feelings are not 



64 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



level with its demands; to follow instinct rather 
than duty ; to wait for the afflatus, instead of invi- 
ting and stirring it by earnest effort. 

It is a delicious breathing of spiritual dilettante- 
ism, but a strain utterly unworthy of our man- 
hood, — 

" Sighing, I cry, Sweet Spirit, come! 
Celestial breeze, no longer stay; 
But swell my sails, and speed my way." 

The discharge of duty against inclination, the 
studying of its times rather than of our times, is 
the part of true manliness. Its times Providence 
marks ; our times may often fail to overtake them, 
and, when we are in a mood which befits them, it 
may be too late for them. There is no need, in 
order that we may do our work, that the entire 
working apparatus of the soul be in perfect trim. 
We may pray for the celestial breeze ; but we 
need not wait for it, so long as ours is the sinewy 
oar-arm. Nay, strenuous, manly effort in what 
we know God would have us do, is our most effi- 
cient prayer for the renewed breathing of the 
Divine Spirit. In this sense, laborare est orare, — 
to labor is to pray. If we ply the oar with true 
aim and resolute purpose, it will not be long before 
the heavenly breeze will spring up, and the flap- 
ping sails be filled, and the weary oar-arm be 
superseded by a more potent impulse. Then, too, 
the breeze will fan the slumbering furnace-flame ; 



MANHOOD. 



65 



the heart will glow and burn ; the rapt spirit wiil 
be borne on as by wheels of fire ; and the very 
task begun coldly and reluctantly, yet at the 
prompting of a loyal conscience, will be finished 
with alacrity and rejoicing. Thus the hand-work 
becomes heart-work ; and the will, at first forced 
into action, is overborne and outspeeded by every 
power and affection that can be brought into gear- 
ing with the machinery of duty. 

Yet more : true manhood needs also to defend 
itself against the tyranny of one's pursuit or pro- 
fession. Man is not an isolated being. He lives 
not, or ought not to live, for himself. He is not 
merely an individual existence, but a child of God, 
to whom he owes fealty, adoration, love, — a mem- 
ber of society, to which he owes every office that 
he can render of helpfulness and charity. His re- 
lations to God and to his fellows are an inseparable 
part of his selfhood. He is no true man, who 
does not consecrate all that he has and is to his 
Father and to his brethren. In these sacred rela- 
tions, none owe so much to God and man as those 
whom a superior education has fitted for what are 
called the liberal pursuits and professions, — which 
are neither liberal nor liberalizing, apart from the 
devout and loving spirit which prompts, guides 
and hallows them. 

The self-centred and self-seeking scholar has 
no specific distinction from the self-centred and 
self-seeking ignoramus. His learning is not wis- 



66 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



dom. It lies in his memory, but is not incorpora- 
ted into his selfhood. What though he know the 
tongues of men, and of angels too? If he have 
not charity, — love, — love to God and man, — they 
profit him nothing. The study of language is 
precious, as a key to great spiritual truths which 
God's providence has imbedded in speech, for rev- 
erent research to disinter, and thus to learn more 
of him ; as an avenue, too, by which humane 
sympathies may become conversant with various 
phases of life and thought, the contemplation 
of which may make the tongue or pen more fluent 
and eloquent for instruction and persuasion. Of 
what avail, again, is physical science, apart from 
the relations, divine and human, in which it may 
serve a kindly ministry? One may know the 
secrets of nature, animate and inanimate; the 
courses of the stars; the infinitesimal mysteries 
which the microscope reveals ; the names of plants, 
from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the 
wall ; the intimate structure of the great globe, 
and its every fabric and tissue: and yet his mind 
will shrivel while he thinks it grows, and he will 
become less and less of a man while he imagines 
that he is achieving greatness, unless he adores 
while he learns, — enters into ever-closer apprehen- 
sion of Him whose " incorruptible spirit is in all 
things," and into an ever-dearer love of all the 
organized, sentient, intelligent forms of being into 
which the Creator has breathed life, beauty, joy, 
from his own fulness. 



MANHOOD. 



67 



Similar considerations apply to the learned 
professions, so called. The manipulation of the 
human body in its phases of disease and suffering 
is in itself a mere mechanical avocation, not one 
whit more dignified, more characteristic of a lofty 
manhood, than the cleansing and repairing of a 
watch or a music-box. But it is a glorious func- 
tion, worthy of perfected manhood, to tend, heal, 
and cure men's maladies and infirmities, when 
compassion guides the hand; when the humane 
purpose hallows the physician's art or the sur- 
geon's skill; when he accepts his calling as a 
charge from the beneficent Father to his children 
in distress. 

The merely technical lawyer, who seeks his 
revenue from the strifes, misfortunes, or follies of 
his neighbors, dwindles in spirit, till he becomes 
the smallest, meanest being that claims to be called 
a man. But he who conscientiously defends the 
right, guards the interests of the accused as a 
sacred trust, maintains the supremacy of law as 
man's least imperfect transcript of the Divine 
order, spurns the temptation to fraud and chi- 
canery, puts on integrity as a robe, and righteous- 
ness as a diadem, — he achieves for himself an 
excelling manhood, and wins a good degree in the 
hierarchy of upright souls. 

The preacher who preaches himself, and not 
Christ ; who aims at reputation, not evangelism ; 
who is not God's oracle, but the mouthpiece of 



68 



BA CCA LA UREA TE SERMONS. 



public opinion ; who makes truce with, popular sin 
and inveterate wrong; who seeks the fleece, in- 
deed, and "the shearer's feast," but to whom 

" The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed," — 

he not only ignores the priestly office which he 
seems to exercise, but abdicates the manhood in 
which alone he should dare to minister at the 
altar. But he does the work and holds the office 
of a true man, who receives his message lovingly 
from the Lord of men and angels, — who in aim 
and purpose is a fellow-worker with the Saviour in 
restoring the lost, consoling the grief-stricken, 
diffusing peace on earth, and maturing human 
spirits for the society of the redeemed. 

I have spoken of the need of fencing our man- 
hood against dictation or example from without, 
against our own sloth or waywardness, against the 
unmanning influence of even the most liberal 
professions. Let me add, in closing, that true 
manhood, while it excludes and scorns all other 
limitations, owns the metes and bounds to its 
liberty established by the Author of our being. 
There is a world of meaning in what was, in my 
infancy, the first reading-lesson in the spelling- 
book which then held exclusive place in our New- 
England schools, — " No man can put off the law of 
God." The moral law has no exceptions, and no 
exempts. Our only safe liberty is within its lim- 
its; our only safe activity is in the directions in 



MANHOOD. 



69 



which it points. Our power, in the full vigor of 
manhood, may be great and wide and lasting ; our 
influence may move crowds ; our opinion may give 
law to many feebler spirits ; our conduct may be 
the rule and pattern for a multitude : but retribu- 
tion is as inevitable as the reflux of the ebbing 
tide. Of the quality of our actions must be our 
destiny. As we sow, we must reap, — if the wind, 
the whirlwind ; if wayward guilt, shame and mis- 
ery; if the bold vices of perverted manhood, the 
heavier condemnation of the chief of sinners. 

This inevitable law needs to be borne in mind ; 
for there are not a few in whom are the germs of 
genuine manhood, who deem it the part of manli- 
ness to scorn the dictates of scrupulous morality, 
to take the law into their own hands, and to defy 
the counsels of religion, as if her voice were only 
for the feebler members of society, or for those 
stricken with grief or age. Never has there been 
a prolonged career of this description, on whose 
declining path retributive justice has not written, 
in appalling characters, its sentence of condemna- 
tion. Never has there been such a career, which 
has not shown that its defiance was aimed at Omni- 
potence, — that its boasted freedom was but a suici- 
dal rush against barriers of adamantine strength, 
erected by the Almighty between guilt and all 
happiness, all blessedness. 

True manliness recognizes things as they are, 
and must of necessity be. It lives in God's uni- 



70 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



verse as his, and under his law as his. It conse- 
crates its entire energy to Him from whom it 
came, and to whom it must be ever amenable. If 
there be a God, nothing is so manly as to own his 
presence and providence, and to dare — whatever 
hinderances there may be — to do his will, and 
obey his commandments. If there be a Saviour, 
who became mortal that he might endow us with 
immortality, nothing is so manly as to confess him 
openly, to keep his whole charge, and to fulfill 
every behest of that love of his which was stronger 
than death. If there be a life beyond the grave, 
and if the complexion of that life be determined 
by our character and conduct here, nothing is so 
manly as to mark with solemn deliberation whither 
the several life-paths lead, and to enter on no path 
on which we are not willing that death should find 
us, and eternity lead us on. 

My friends of the graduating Class, I trust that 
these counsels will not seem inappropriate, as you 
pass from restraint and tutelage, to be hencefor- 
ward, under God, your own masters. I can offer 
for you no better wish, no more hearty prayer, 
than that you show yourselves men. This the 
University claims of you, if her discipline have 
been of any worth. This your age and your 
country need of you, and of all who have enjoyed 
like culture. This your several professions will 
demand of you, if you would honor them, and be 
honored in them. This God requires of you, — 



MANHOOD. 



71 



that you hallow to his praise, and exercise in his 
service, the manhood in which you bear his image ; 
for " the Father seeketh such to worship him." 

I wish that I could charge my words with the 
fervent benediction for you which is in my heart. 
May God Almighty lead you in every way of his 
commandments, defend you from evil, make you 
his ministers of blessing in the several spheres of 
duty to which his providence shall call you ! May 
Jesus Christ — the only sure corner-stone of your 
life-edifice for time and for eternity — inspire you 
with his strength, and breathe into your souls his 
peace ! May you so own him on earth, that he 
shall own you at the solemn judgment-seat ! May 
you so follow him here, that you shall be his 
followers in heaven and for ever ! 



VI. 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW. 

(1869.) 

"I will keep thy law continually, and I will walk at liberty." 
— Psalm cxix. 44, 45. 

Fhictio^ seems, at first thought, the prime hii> 
derance to the working of all mechanical forces. 
On the other hand, it is the condition, the means, 
the constant auxiliary, of their efficiency. It gives 
them the hold without which they are powerless, 
the direction without which they are aimless. 
Mathematically, it is but a modifying element in 
their respective formulas ; but without it these 
formulas would have been mere abstractions of the 
brain, not representatives of physical facts or pos- 
sibilities. Man may overcome the steepest aclivi- 
ties on land; he may steer his steamer in the very 
teeth of the hurricane ; in the air, he can sail only 
with the wind, because he has no holding ground. 

What friction is in mechanics, law is in the 
universe of mind. It seems to constrain freedom, 
while, in fact, it is the essential condition of free- 



THE S 0 VEBEIGNTY OF LAW. 



73 



dom. Without it, there could be no aim, no direc- 
tion, no fruitful industry, no successful interprise. 
Without it, forethought would have no data ; 
effort, no purchase. Man would be the puppet of 
unforseen circumstance, whirled about in the ed- 
dies of incalculable chance. Under the reign of 
law, we can choose with the hope of realizing, aim 
with the prospect of attaining, work with the pro- 
phecy of success. Thus law and liberty are cor- 
relatives, as our text makes them, law alone ren- 
dering liberty possible. 

But are there no exempts ? May not law be 
racked, and stretched, and tampered with, by a 
man of resolute will, so that he may be free, not 
under law, but over it, in spite of it, — so that he 
may neglect or violate it, yet evade the normal 
consequences of such neglect or violation ? So 
many think ; but it is an opinion which experience 
almost inevitably reverses. Happy they whose 
experience has not been experiment ! 

In Webster's Spelling Book, long the classic of 
American infancy, the first lesson in " easy read- 
ing " was, " No man can put off the law of God." 
One who knew the old lexicographer, as I did, 
could hardly help thinking that he was, inspired 
by a higher wisdom than his own ; for that maxim, 
so profoundly impressed upon the memory of the 
children whose culture he made his care, is the 
most momentous lesson that man can learn. It is 
learned, no doubt, by all, sooner or later, — by 



74 



BA CCALA UBEA TE SERMONS. 



many, however, not in this world, — by many, only 
through a sad and fatal series of experiments, as 
fruitless as would be the attempt to bind the wind, 
or to stop the stars. 

I have thought that I could select no more fit 
theme than the supremacy of law, for those who 
are just emerging from a state of pupilage into one 
of larger liberty. Let us consider some of the 
ways in which young men often expect and at- 
tempt to evade or override law. 

In the realm of intellect there are not a few 
who expect success without strenuous endeavor, 
achievement without adequate labor, reputation 
without patient and persevering toil, the high 
prizes of professional or literary eminence without 
the self-denial and self-discipline which befit those 
who strive for the mastery. The really ambitious 
student sometimes accustoms himself to spasmodic 
effort, with long intervals of quiescence, and sup- 
poses that by intense mental action for short 
periods he can supply the lack of continuous exer- 
tion. I have lived long enough to know from ob- 
servation, even did I not believe in law, that 
there are no exempts on the arena of honor- 
able competition, — that diligence is the invariable 
condition of permanent success and valuable at- 
tainment. Industry can almost create its own in- 
struments. It can quicken the slow, sharpen the 
dull, and energize the feeble intellect, so that he 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW. 



75 



who starts on the race of life with all the odds 
against him, can distance those who have every- 
thing but persevering industry in their favor. I 
might, were it fitting, cite well-known names of 
men regarded as foremost in their respective de- 
partments, who were commiserated at the outset 
for their blindness and fatuity in attempting high 
intellectual culture, so slender an estimate was 
placed on their capacity ; but who became pre-em- 
inently men of talents, in the sense suggested by 
our Lord's parable, having had but one talent giv- 
en them, and having multiplied it tenfold by its 
faithful use. One I knew, who held with credit 
the highest offices in the national cabinet and 
judiciary, who in his youth was at once the laugh- 
ing-stock of his fellow-students for the utter hebe- 
tude of his intellect, and their wonder for his un- 
precedented closeness of application and abstin- 
ence from amusement and relaxation. Not one of 
them approached the eminence which he fairly 
earned. 

There can be no doubt that spasmodic, fitful, 
intermittent effort may accomplish a great deal in 
a little time. So may a horse, by hard driving, be 
made to carry twice his normal load, or to travel 
at twice his normal speed ; but the utmost aggre- 
gate of such achievements, in a month or a week, 
is less than that of his regular, systematic labor 
would be, while his capacity of extraordinary 
labor early declines, and with it, his power of ordi- 



76 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



nary, normal work. He is prematurely worn out 
and worthless. The men who prefer overwork, 
and work out of season, to sustained and regular 
industry, for a while keep abreast, or even in 
advance, of those whom they deem mere plodders ; 
but their fits of industry gradually become less 
frequent and less productive. At thirty, they can 
accomplish much less than at twenty. They pass 
the zenith of their fame at an age when their 
more diligent coevals are hardly midway on their 
ascending path; and then they lose reputation 
faster than they had gained it, and linger on in 
inanity, in a sort of living death, serving no valua- 
ble purpose, except to demonstrate the sovereignty 
of the divine law which measures the laborer's 
hire by his toil. 

Let it not be imagined that even genius creates 
exceptions to this law. It has furnished the most 
impressive instances of its inevitable operation. 
Take the case of Byron. No man ever lived in 
whom the poetic flame burned brighter than in 
him. But with poems and parts of poems that will 
last while the language endures, and will win him 
imperishable fame, he has left a much larger mass 
of the merest doggerel, silly when not worse ; and 
his works, taken collectively, present a melancholy 
spectacle of wasted powers, of premature senility, 
of a life which was little else than a lengthened 
suicide. Contrast such a career as his with that 
of Milton, whose genius globes itself entire in 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW. 



77 



every sonnet and fugitive stanza, whose labors for 
civil and religious freedom might have seemed 
work and glory enough for the foremost man of 
his age, and whose mere pastime it was, — the 
sands of every hour utilized as they ran, — that 
found its recreation and its joy by 

" Siloa's brook that flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God." 

Genius is not the capacity of creating without 
toil, but that of working greatly and gloriously. 
There are preserved, in Michael Angelo's house in 
Florence, juvenile sketches of his which any youth 
might have drawn, indicating the slow and tenta- 
tive development of that Titanic power, whose 
vastness and grandeur were the miracle of his 
time. In the Ambrosian Library, at Milan, are 
large collections of drawings, in every stage of 
finish, and of every grade of merit, by Leonardo 
da Vinci, Raphael, and other world-famous paint- 
ers, demonstrating that they learned to give shape 
to their ideals by arduous and painful toil, and 
awakening the doubt whether even they would 
have left monuments of their genius more precious 
than the wealth of empires, had they trusted to 
inspiration alone, — had not the capacity of patient 
labor come to them with "the vision and the 
faculty divine." I am constantly impressed by the 
life-records and the memorials of the men Avhose 
works are a possession for all time and for their 



78 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



race, with the conviction that they had learned, as 
the price of their fame, 

"To scorn delights and live laborious days." 

Believe, my friends, that by the immutable law 
of God you may become all that it is in your hearts 
to be, if you will but pay this price. Your wills 
have hitherto been in part constrained, I trust by a 
not unwise discretion, which has sought to give you, 
often, "not what you wish, but what you want." 
Yet this constraint — greatly relaxed under our 
present elective system — has had its purpose and 
bearing in preparing you for the judicious exercise 
of liberty. A liberal education has for its end, as 
its name implies, freedom of the entire realm of 
intellect. Its aim is, not merely or chiefly to im- 
part knowledge, but to create the capacity of fruit- 
ful study in any and every department, and to in- 
itiate the student into each, just so far as to furnish 
him with the data by which he may choose his own 
pursuits warily and profitably. Thus furnished, 
you are now to make your election. Let your 
choice be free, unbiased by the opinions of others, 
— for you ought to know yourselves better than 
they can know you ; unbiased by sordid motives 
of interest, — for, even were they to be your law, 
they cannot be subserved by the choice of pursuits 
for which you have no taste and no conscious fit- 
ness. Elect for your profession, for your chief 
study, for your prime pursuit, that only which you 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW. 



79 



can embrace lovingly, — into which you can put 
what of zeal and energy is in you ; for that, and that 
alone, is your calling, and calling is a Providential 
word, — it is God that calls you by the several tastes 
and adaptations with which you enter what shall 
be your respective fields of labor. But remember 
that taste, fitness, love, of themselves can never 
make you masters of your calling. They are of 
service only as they enable and empower you for 
thorough, faithful work ; and to thorough, faithful 
work alone can the coveted prize accrue. Labor 
then, 

" As ever in the great Taskmaster's eye ; " 

and from man, and from God, shall come, not in 
mere words, but in the solid fruits of success, grow- 
ing reputation, extended usefulness, the plaudit, 
"Well done, good and faithful servant." 

Let me now speak of the supremacy of law in 
the moral universe. I think that our errors of 
conduct, our moral delinquencies, our censurable 
habits, almost always have their beginnings in our 
imagined ability to set aside the divine law without 
suffering the consequences of disobedience. We 
all believe in the general truths, that conduct re- 
acts on character ; that one is almost irresistibly led 
to follow his own example, and thus to make a single 
wrong act or vicious indulgence a precedent for 
others of its kind; that Obsta principiis, Resist the 



80 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



beginnings of evil, is the only safe rule. But one 
often says to himself, " This is true in the vast 
majority of cases ; but I am an exempt. I see the 
peril so clearly, that I can guard against it. I can 
sin without repeating it. I can set myself a bad 
example, and refuse to follow it. I can stop my- 
self just when and where I choose. I can get the 
pleasurable revenue of wrong-doing, and arrest my- 
self early enough to shun its shame and its misery." 

But the divine law. of retribution is universal. 
It has no exceptions, and no exempts. And it is a 
law which works, not only in the outward world, 
but with even more discernible precision, on the 
soul itself, on its capacities and proclivities. You 
cannot yield to any form of temptation without 
bringing your whole inward nature into sympathy 
with the wrong you do. You cannot escape the 
tendency to follow your own example. You can- 
not at will, after a single lapse, replace yourself 
where you stood before. You cannot resume to 
yourself the consciousness of blameless virtue. 
You cannot wash out the foul stain from your me- 
mory, or forget that you have entered into associa- 
tions which a little earlier you would have scorned 
and spurned. You cannot fail to find yourself, not, 
as before, on a table-land which gives you firm 
foot-hold, but on a declivity on which your stand- 
ing is insecure, and down which the fiery coursers 
of appetite and passion may drag you with the bits 
and reins no longer at your command. The bound- 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW. 



81 



ary between right and wrong once passed, the 
border-land once left behind, I do not say — thank 
God, I cannot say — that there is no salvation for 
you ; but there is no salvation for you in the way 
you anticipate, painlessly, shamelessly, by the ex- 
ercise of your own calm judgment and the energy 
of your own unprompted will If it please God in 
his mercy, with your early deviation from the right, 
to bring you to exposure, open shame, and bitter 
self-reproach, so that you shall feel profoundly the 
full weight of the divine retribution, there is hope 
that you may retrace your steps, and plant yourself 
where you will henceforth be safe against temp- 
tation. No one who wisely loves the young can 
fail to rejoice when their first steps in the way of 
the transgressors are promptly and signally over- 
taken by the consequences they most dread. Many 
there are who owe their rising again solely to the 
speediness and the intense shame and suffering of 
their fall. But if visible and tangible retribution 
lingers, think not that it can be evaded. The 
later, the heavier. 

While I speak thus, I rejoice that T address so 
many who seem not to need these counsels, — who 
have encountered the temptations of early youth, 
only to overcome them and look down upon them. 
No one can recognize more heartily than I do the 
growth of character, the pure, high, generous tone 
of manliness, the sound principle and elevated 
purpose, represented in those of whom we take our 



82 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



leave to-day. I feel strong confidence in the 
virtue which has thus far withstood all adverse 
influences, and has visibly grown under exposure 
often intensely perilous. Yet I cannot forget that 
there are for many of you yet severer perils in the 
near future, when the restraints that have hitherto 
been around you will be removed, and you must 
breast temptation, perhaps alone, perhaps in an 
atmosphere overcharged with a pestilential miasma, 
among corrupt examples, among those whose max- 
ims and habits of conduct are at once depraved 
and ensnaring. What you will need above all 
things else is to take to your hearts the omnipo- 
tent sovereignty of the moral law; and, while 
science teaches you" the reign of law in the whole 
universe, to extend its teachings to the whole 
realm within, believing that, so long as the eternal 
God shall live, man will reap as he sows: if to the 
flesh, corruption ; if to the spirit righteousness, 
peace, joy, everlasting life. 

I would next remind you that the sovereignty 
of law in the moral universe is as full of encour- 
agement as of admonition. It should give you 
undoubting hope in every virtuous effort, in the 
whole discipline of character. Here the law which 
constrains you to follow your own example is 
unspeakably beneficent. The victory over allur- 
ing evil, which you win only by arduous conflict, 
is the precedent for a next easier conquest, and 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW. 



83 



for a next still easier, till the temptation, at first 
formidable, shall be no longer a power which it 
costs you a struggle to subdue. On the side of 
good, no less than of evil, conduct reacts on char- 
acter. Wait not to feel all that you want to feel, 
in order to do all that you ought to do. Do, that 
you may feel ; act, that you may experience ; obey, 
that you may have the inward blessing of obe- 
dieifce. You know the right, — that is enough for 
action; but the peace that passeth understanding 
is not for those who merely know, but for those 
who, knowing, keep the commandments of God. 

There are many duties that seem arduous. 
They are resisted by indolence, perhaps by false 
shame, perhaps by associations that appear unpro- 
pitious to them. But it is the first step only that 
costs. Every endeavor in the direction of duty 
brings your moral nature, your tastes, your asso- 
ciations, more into harmony with duty. Single 
right acts multiply . into habits, habits deepen into 
principles, principles become solidified into charac- 
ter ; and when this stage is reached, the right is 
immeasurably easier than the wrong, so that sin 
would be conscious self-denial. 

The prophet, in describing the way by which 
the ransomed Israelites should return from their 
captivity in Babylon, says : " Instead of the thorn 
shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier 
shall come up the myrtle-tree." This is verified 
in every virtuous course, in every true life. The 



84 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



opening way of duty, of unwonted duty, is, or may 
be, flanked by thorns and briers. If nothing else, 
there is the difficulty of newness, of inexperience ; 
and there is wanting, of necessity, the inward joy, 
which follows, not precedes, right conduct. But 
as we go on, God plants the fir-tree and the myrtle 
on our path. And they are evergreen. They 
cast not their leaves; their coronal of beauty and 
glory never withers. They may be almost hidden 
from sight while draped with the gorgeous and 
bright-tinted blossoms of a happy youth and a 
prosperous prime ; but when the leaves from our 
earthly life-tree fall, and its flowers lie withered, 
these trees of God's husbandry shall still shelter 
and gladden our declining years, our closing days, 
in their perennial freshness prophecies of the eter- 
nal life that shall be ours in the paradise on high. 

My friends of the graduating class, let me hope 
that these parting words of mine will find in your 
hearts the place that is their due. Keep the law, 
and it shall keep you. Honor it, and it shall 
exalt you. Submit yourselves to it, and you shall 
hold its sceptre and rule by its might. Serve it, 
and you shall find its service perfect freedom. 

Accept, with my counsels, my thanks for the 
happy memories that you will leave with me, my 
cordial recognition of the courtesy and kindness 
on your part that have marked our intercourse, 
my fervent good wishes for your whole future, in 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LA W. 



85 



the life that now is, and in the life beyond life. 
May a loyal and approving conscience, the praise 
of good men, the love of your Saviour, the blessing 
of your God, be yours now and evermore ! 



VII. 



AUTHORITY. 

(1870.) 

"One having authority." — Matthew vii. 29. 

Almost all questions of belief and conduct are 
included in the one fundamental question between 
authority and autonomy. Does there exist any- 
where the right to be believed and obeyed? Or 
are individual consciousness and experience the 
sole source, test, and ground of truth and duty? 
If I can help those who are now going to leave us 
to answer this question wisely, I am sure that the 
magnitude of the interests involved will make it 
seem not inappropriate to an occasion like the 
present. 

What is authority? I apprehend that the 
ambiguity and the misuse of this word occasion 
not a little of the contempt of authority so rife at 
the present time. Authority is indeed often em- 
ployed to denote mere power ; but it really means 
right, — the right to assent or credence, which 
sometimes implies, not in itself, but from the 
nature of the case, the right to obedience or sub- 



AUTHORITY. 



87 



mission. Right is always the basis of authority. 
Where there is no right, there may be power, but 
there is no authority. Conversely, right includes 
and implies authority ; it has, for its due, belief, 
obedience, or both, as the nature of the case may 
require. 

Authority and progress are often set over against 
each other, as mutually adverse. So far is this 
from being the case that they are inseparably 
allied. Where one is not, the other cannot be. 
Authority is the ground of almost all our knowl- 
edge ; it has been the essential condition and the 
sole means of human progress ; and it is equally 
the condition and means of all future progress. I 
will first illustrate these propositions with refer- 
ence to science, in which they are undisputed, and 
then develop their application to morals and reli- 
gion, in which they are disputed. 

We will select the science of chemistry as a 
test of these propositions. This science, under its 
Saracenic name of alchemy, had its centuries of 
nonage and imbecility, first with the Eastern race 
that gave it its name, and then among the races of 
Western Europe. The early alchemists found 
themselves in what seemed a tumultuous chaos of 
substances and phenomena. They at first made 
experiments at random, and in ninety-nine cases 
out of a hundred with no results save to demon- 
strate their ignorance. But gradually, as they 
pursued their researches, a thread of light gleamed 



83 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



here and there on their dense darkness ; stray fila- 
ments of order revealed themselves in the chaos ; 
approximate laws of chemical combination and 
action were discovered ; provisional theories, em- 
bracing the few truths that had been ascertained, 
were established. These laws, these theories, were 
received on authority ; else every new inquirer 
must have gone over the whole ground afresh, and 
would have got no further than his predecessors. 
But each generation of inquirers mounted as it 
were on the shoulders of those that had gone 
before them, availed themselves, in the form of 
axioms, of the results of antecedent experiment 
and discovery, and on this basis made their own 
contributions to the science. Nor did their faith 
in authority belie itself. The laws once discov- 
ered were not negatived, but merged in more 
comprehensive laws. The theories once received 
were not set aside, but made subsidiary to larger 
generalizations and broader theories. Each gene- 
ration of chemists from the middle ages downward 
has bequeathed its quota to the present advanced 
stage of the science, and the authority of each, 
legitimately founded and recognized, has borne an 
essential part in its progress. 

Now, suppose that one of the graduating class, 
determined to become an adept in chemistry, were 
to plant himself in the attitude assumed in our 
day by those who deem themselves the advanced 
thinkers in morals and religion, and to say, "I 



A U Til OR IT Y. 



83 



abjure all authority. I can take no traditional 
theories on trust. I have the same implements of 
investigation that my predecessors had, — as good 
hands, brain, intellect as they, and the same limit- 
less field of exploration spread out before me. I 
will believe nothing that I have not tested and 
verified for myself; nor will I pay even sufficient 
respect to the beliefs of other men, to give them a 
foremost place in my experiments, or provisional 
credence till I have proved their falsity." I need 
not say what the result would be. He might 
labor through a long lifetime, and would then die 
as good a chemist as Adam was in his seventieth or 
eightieth year. 

It may be given to some of you, who have 
studied earnestly and lovingly in the laboratory, to 
enlarge essentially the bounds of human knowledge 
in your chosen department. If so, how will you 
do it ? By receiving on authority what is already 
known. By working .upon the basis of antecedent 
discoveries. These discoveries you will indeed in- 
cidentally verify ; that knowledge you will confirm 
by your own experiments ; yet your aim will be, 
not verification, but a deeper research, a more prob- 
ing analysis, which you can make hopefully and 
successfully only as you take your stand on well- 
established authority. 

You may say, however, " I yield to authority in 
these matters of science, because it is concerned 
merely with human experiments and discoveries ; 



90 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



and what one man has found out or learned, another 
man may believe." Very true. But does it make 
any difference how he has found it out, or learned 
it ? A chemical revelation is at least conceivable, 
if not probable. Suppose that, in the utter igno- 
rance that prevailed in the fifteenth century, there 
had suddenly come forth men who proclaimed, as 
fundamental truths, the precise laws of chemical 
combination and action that are recognized now ; 
suppose that these men had averred that the laws 
they promulgated were made known to them by 
the Supreme Author of nature ; suppose that, from 
that period to this, the laws thus proclaimed had 
been in a thousand ways verified, in not a single 
particular disproved by subsequent observation and 
experiment, — would they rest on a less firm basis of 
authority than they do now ? Manifestly, no. You 
would justly say, " God is amply competent to teach 
men chemistry. Whether it was antecedently prob- 
able that he would do so, it is not for us to discuss, 
when confronted by facts that prove the affirmative. 
The sudden outblooming of knowledge from gross 
ignorance — in itself a miracle — renders it not mere- 
ly probable, but absolutely certain." 

We thus see that this science, and by parity of 
reason every science, rests on a constantly growing 
substructure of authority, and that there is no in- 
trinsic impossibility that this substructure, instead 
of growing by slow accretions, might have been built 
at any one epoch by the immediate agency of that 



AUTHORITY. 



91 



Supreme Being, who has seen fit to employ in build- 
ing it successive generations of scientific men. 

Let us now turn our attention to the depart- 
ment of morals. Independently of authority, man 
is irresistibly led to try all kinds of moral experi- 
ments. He is an aggregate of appetites, proclivi- 
ties, passions, both good and evil, and whichever of 
these is paramount for the time being craves its own 
gratification as essential to the happiness of the mo- 
ment. To be sure, in our Christian theories, con- 
science is supreme among the moral faculties. But 
if it be so (which I do not by any means doubt), it 
is yet, without special training, far from being the 
first to assert supremacy. The lower appetites have 
so far the precedence of it as to check and dwarf 
its growth. In any non-Christian community the 
proportion of those in whom it bears sway is in- 
fmitesimally small. 

In this condition of things, results, retributive 
consequences, are man's only moral teachers. One 
may indulge an appetite or a passion till he has ex- 
hausted its power of giving him pleasure, till it be- 
gins to ply its scourge and inflict its torment ; and 
then he first becomes aware that he has tried a false 
experiment. But even then there is small proba- 
bility that he will make his next experiment in a 
virtuous direction ; for his career of self-indulgence 
has deadened conscience, and rendered him imper- 
vious to the attractions of virtue. If he has self- 
command enough to stop on the precipitous path to 



92 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



utter ruin, he resorts to a safer, slower vice, which 
first gratifies, then satiates, then torments him. 
Only in late old age, after a series of fruitless ex- 
periments, when appetite and passion have lost their 
vitality, and the world has nothing more to offer 
him, does he begin to perceive that there was a 
surer way to happiness in purity, integrity, and 
kindness. 

But why are not the results of cumulative ex- 
perience, as in science so in morals, adequate autho- 
rity for new generations ? For two reasons. First, 
the pursuit of science enlarges and exalts a man's in- 
tellectual nature, attaches weight to his testimony, 
and endows him with an authority which his fellow- 
men are not slow to acknowledge ; while vice 
weakens and degrades a man, makes him contemp- 
tible, and takes from him all semblance of autho- 
rity. Secondly, there is no native tendency hostile 
to scientific truth, no appetency for error, no inward 
protest against established laws and dominant theo- 
ries, but it is only the thirst for knowledge and a 
cordial readiness to welcome it from all legitimate 
sources that bring one into the field of science ; 
while there are in man's lower nature strong antago- 
nistic forces against virtue. 

For these reasons the cumulative moral experi- 
ence of our race, for the first four thousand years 
or more of the world's history, had no appreciable 
influence on the moral beliefs of mankind at large. 
From the earliest ages to the Christian era there 



AUTHORITY. 



93 



had been no essential progress in practical ethics. 
Before, and at that era, the more cultivated 
nations had successively attained, in luxury, art, 
and literature, a refinement and perfectness, which 
more recent times have in vain essayed to reach. 
But lower depravity than pervaded all classes and 
conditions of people can never have existed upon 
the earth ; and men who in all other respects were 
highly enlightened knew not that it was depravity. 
Nothing is more astonishing than the perfect 
naivete with which the writers of the Augustan 
age — not onty the lyric poets, from whom a certain 
measure of license might have been expected, but 
men of the most approved gravity and decency — 
recognize, as entirely consistent with respectability, 
forms of immorality so foul and infamous as to 
have passed out of the speech and knowledge of 
Christendom. 

The only portion of mankind that then owned 
any authority in morals was the Jewish race ; and 
I might show you that, however far they had fallen 
below their own standard, yet, as compared with 
the nations of far superior culture with which they 
were brought in contact, they were immeasurably 
more virtuous ; that they were never addicted to 
the most degrading vices ; and that some right 
things were habitually done, and some wrong things 
habitually abstained from, solely on authority 
which they believed Divine. 

But now appeared a Being, who is reported to 



94 



BA CCA LA UREA TE SERMONS. 



have taught and lived moral perfection ; whose 
words were received as from God; whose life was 
regarded as a transcript of the Divine purity and 
beauty. He claimed authority, and his authority 
has been recognized till now by all the greatly 
good men who have since lived. We know not a 
single instance in which his precepts have failed on 
trial by the test of consciousness ; in which obe- 
dience to him has had any other than a beneficent 
result. Moreover, — what was not the case prev- 
iously, — there has been moral progress within the 
last two thousand years. Yet, when we analyze it, 
we hardly know whether to call it progress ; for it 
has consisted solely in the enucleating of principles, 
or the drawing of inevitable inferences from, his 
words and his life, and the embodying of those prin- 
ciples and applying of those inferences in the state, 
the community, the family, and the personal con- 
duct of individuals. It is by virtue of his authority 
that so many of the wrongs and evils that lay 
heavily upon humanity have been removed ; and 
that, with all the faults and sins that we lament, 
there yet is recognized a pure and lofty standard of 
right, by which men acquit or condemn themselves 
and others. We see, too, that there is opened 
within the scope of this authority a field for moral 
progress, to our finite vision unlimited. There 
are many departments of life that yet await the 
application of Christian morality, and many more 
in which this application is but imperfectly made. 



AUTHORITY. 



95 



Moreover, we cannot look beyond these prin- 
ciples. We can conceive of nothing higher. Those 
who disown their authority do not charge them 
with imperfection, do not deny their intrinsic ex- 
cellence, but maintain that they are too good, that 
they restrain man's propensities too rigidly, and 
impose heavier obligations than it is convenient 
for him to bear. I want to emphasize this point : 
Christian morality is never objected to on the 
ground of its faultiness, but solely because it is 
better than men need. 

My young friends, you will encounter those 
who deny all authority in morals, who promulgate 
such precepts as, Obey your impulses, Follow your 
instincts, Do what seems right in your own eyes, 
as the sum and substance of morality. Let me 
submit to you whether, on the very grounds on 
which you yield to authority in science, you are 
not bound to yield to it in the conduct of life. In 
the promulgation of a morality that has not yet 
needed revision, by one who seemed a provincial 
peasant, in a corrupt age, and in a nation at best 
narrow, bigoted, and formalistic, — even were there 
not the outward attestation claimed in the record, 
you have an intensely strong probability that these 
rules of duty came, not from a human brain, but 
from the Omniscient Mind; in fact, the very 
same probability which you would own, were a 
science to spring thus from nothingness to maturity. 
You have the concurrent experience of good men 



96 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



and of bad men, in attestation of the perfectness of 
this morality, and not a single experience of a 
good man or a bad man which casts donbt on any 
one of its precepts. Will you not, then, find it 
the part of wisdom to make trial of it? 

I do not apprehend for such as listen seriously 
to my appeal any very broad departure, at the out- 
set, from the Christian rule of right. But in every 
direction you may find respectable custom, nay, 
even respectable opinion and advice, in favor of a 
little broader license than Jesus Christ would allow, 
a somewhat freer indulgence, a somewhat less rigid 
adherence to fixed principles, a somewhat looser 
construction of the canons of Christian soberness, 
purity, or integrity, and, above all, the throwing 
off of every restraint from outside rule or law, and 
being a law to yourselves. What I most dread for 
you is the tendency of this divergence, however 
slight it may appear, to grow rapidly. You know 
how rapidly the sides of the very smallest acute angle 
diverge. It is precisely so in morals. These dif- 
ferences, which seem to need a spiritual micrometer 
to measure them, broaden amazingly fast, and if 
you start a very little less or other than Christian 
in your moral habits, by the time you come to your- 
self and take account of your position, you will find 
that you have made a most appalling departure, 
and belong to an entirely different school. In that 
case I have no doubt you will be conscious of hav- 
ing made a very fearful, perhaps a fatal, mistake, — 



AUTHORITY. 



97 



perhaps fatal ; for when you see what you ought to 
have been, you may lack the moral strength for 
your recovery. 

Authority and experience are in morals your 
Prometheus and your Epimetheus, — the former 
lighting the path before you with fire from heaven ; 
the latter shedding light only on the steps which 
you cannot retrace. I feel the fullest assurance 
that, if you live long enough, you will reach in this 
world, at all events in the world to come, the con- 
clusion of the author of Ecclesiastes : " Fear God 
and keep his commandments; this is the whole 
duty of man." But I pray that you may not reach 
it, as he did, by exhausting all other experiments. 
I would give you, as my parting charge, that you 
start where otherwise you must land; that you 
make your first experiments in the line indicated 
by that verse of our hymn, which condenses the sum 
of all practical wisdom, and embraces the entire 
substance of ethical philosophy : — 

" Our glorious Leader claims our praise 

For his own pattern given ; 
While the long cloud of witnesses 

Show the same path to heaven." 

These steps, my friends, are well-tried steps; 
that path is a well-worn road. Your Saviour trod 
it with -bleeding feet; but from every drop of his 
precious blood there has sprung up, instead of the 
thorn the fir-tree, instead of the briar the myrtle, 



98 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



and you will find it a way of sacred peace and 
abounding joy. 

I would now speak of authority in religion. 
Here, too, you will find that, independently of au- 
thority, there has been no progress. I have been 
greatly impressed by the reports of the lectures de- 
livered in Boston during the last winter by the 
apostles of free religion. No two have agreed, and 
several of the lectures have been devoted to the 
formal refutation of those that have preceded them. 
The lecturers are sure of nothing, not even of the 
existence of a personal God, not even of individual 
immortality. I am impressed, also, by the air of 
venerable antiquity which their speculations have 
borne. Their range has been between Plato and 
Lucretius. Some of them reach Plato's almost pure 
theism, about which yet hangs a pantheistic haze, 
— the Deity only semi-detached from the coeternal 
universe, of which he is not the Creator Spirit, but 
the developed soul, to be admired rather than wor- 
shipped, — at best far short of the eternal Father, 
the universal Providence, the Recipient of our 
prayers, the loving Arbiter of our destiny in all 
time and in all worlds. Others, with Lucretius, be- 
hold in the universe only the seething concourse 
and self-combining nisus of primitive atoms, and 
are ready to say with him, " Ignorance of causes 
constrains men to submit things to the empire of 
the gods, and to make over the kingdom to them. 
The works whose causes they can in no wise 



AUTHORITY. 



99 



discern, they imagine are wrought by Divine 
power." 

Beyond these limits individual man cannot pass, 
life is so short, and the universe so vast ; while, if 
authority be repudiated, every man must begin 
anew, and must work out for himself the immense 
and numberless problems of creation, being, life, 
death, an eternal past, an eternal future. 

I do not ask you, my young friends, to commit 
yourselves absolutely and unconditionally even to 
the authority which I deem Divine. But one of two 
things you must do. You must take on authority 
some theory as the starting-point and resting-point 
for your inquiries ; or else you must plunge into the 
swirling vortex of unfathomable mysteries, without 
sun, stars, chart, or compass ; and in this case you 
will be a strong and a brave man, if in the lapse of 
a long lifetime you reach even a pronounced athe- 
ism, still more, an embryo theism. You will start, 
nay, you are resting now, on some authority in re- 
ligion. You are either quietly reposing on one of 
the last statements of rationalism, theism, or athe- 
ism, — on the authority of some brilliant lecture or 
article, which, with epigrammatic terseness, or with 
arguments that assume all that they prove, or with 
Delphic aphorisms that have a sublime afflatus, but 
no reasoning, has swept away all the phantasms of 
Christian faith and reverence ; or else you have 
planted yourself on the authority of Him who 
claimed to utter and manifest on earth divine and 



100 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



eternal truth. You, of course, cannot pretend to 
have studied these subjects thoroughly yourselves, 
though I trust you will. Meanwhile, as I said, you 
are taking your belief on authority. Shall it not, 
then, be on an authority which has the sanction of 
generations and ages of the wise and the good ; to 
which almost all the great minds of the last eighteen 
centuries have yielded assent ; and, above all, to 
which those whose mental vision has been purged 
and clarified by transcendent moral excellence, have 
rendered their unanimous homage ? 

You have, indeed, heard superficial objections 
against Christianity. They are superficial, though 
imposing; and you therefore hear them in the 
street, and the railway car, and the club-room. 
Objections that seem to you not superficial, but 
profound and radical, are also urged, as if they 
were the growth of the latest wisdom, the advanced 
philosophy, the larger scientific generalizations of 
the nineteenth century, unanswered and unan- 
swerable. They are by no means the novelties they 
seem. Many of them are old both in form and in 
substance, and those that are new in form are old 
in substance. It is not by ignoring them that in- 
telligent and strong-minded Christians have pre- 
served their faith. They have looked them full in 
the face, have admitted their entire force, and, in 
despite of them, have still found an immense pre- 
ponderance of external proof, and, above all, of in- 
ternal evidence, in behalf of the Divine authority 



AUTHORITY. 



101 



of Jesus Christ. There are no firmer believers 
than those who are the most familiar with all the 
newest phases of scepticism and unbelief. 

All that I ask of you is to give Christianity, in 
your minds, the benefit of the prescriptive authority 
which entitles it to precedence before all other 
beliefs, till you have patiently sifted its evidences, 
examined its witnesses, confronted it with adverse 
reasonings, and decided upon its claims with the 
seriousness which befits an affair of such vital 
moment. Christianity has a right to this prescrip- 
tion. True or false, it has been the most benefi- 
cent agency in the world's history. It lies at the 
basis of our whole modern civilization. It has 
been illustrated by the greatest names in the an- 
nals of our race. It is identified with every form 
of philanthrop}^, with every stage of human pro- 
gress, with all that makes home happy, sacred, and 
blessed, with all free institutions, with the noblest 
heroism, with the most generous self-sacrifice. It 
has for every one of you the holiest associations 
with the living, the most precious memories of the 
dead. Think, too, what it assures to you, if it be 
true, — the love of the eternal Father ; the guar- 
dianship of a watchful Providence ; the aid of Om- 
nipotence in duty ; the forgiveness of the sins of 
which you cannot but be conscious ; the tender 
sympathy of Him who is at once the incarnate 
power and love of God, and your brother in con- 
flict, trial, and temptation ; an immortality based 



102 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

not, on doubtful speculation, but on substantial 
evidence ; the pledge of heavenly blessedness as 
the certain issue of a faithful and obedient life. 
What in comparison with this is offered you by any 
other form of belief or non-belief? Oh, if you 
have any self-love, you will not suffer yourselves to 
be cajoled out of this faith by any mere parade of 
objections or counter-arguments. You will try the 
foundations on which the piety of ages has rested, 
on which successive generations of believers have 
built in the strength and beauty of holiness ; and 
I know that you will find them firm as the throne 
of God. 

My friends, in my pleasant and happy relations 
with you, I have enjoyed nothing so much as the 
privilege of leading you, at the commencement and 
the close of your course, in the survey of the 
grounds on which our Christian faith presents itself 
for your profound reverence, your cordial reception, 
the homage of your hearts, and the consecration of 
your lives. If I have aided any of you in the 
establishment of this faith, my gladness and grati- 
tude are beyond my power of utterance. Let me 
earnestly commend to you the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ as your guide, your hope, your joy. On 
your several careers you have, each and all of you, 
my most fervent good wishes for your success, use- 
fulness, and eminence. But I pray, more than for 
all else, that you may have success in your high 
calling as Christians ; usefulness through the ex- 



A UTHORITY. 



103 



ample and influence of pure and holy lives ; the 
eminence which God bestows on his chosen ones, — 
which Jesus will pronounce, when he says, " Well 
done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." 



VIII. 



THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 

(1871.) 

"The parting of the way." — Ezekiel xxi. 21. 

Herein lies the joy, the sadness, the solemnity 
of this epoch. That you who will soon leave us 
have been together for four years is a matter of no 
slight or brief importance. s You have been build- 
ing up, not only your own, but one another's 
characters ; and as you part, you will bear with 
you, not only memories that you will love to 
recall, but solid portions of one another's interior 
life, which you will have made forever yours. 

In some respects you will still walk together, 
though apart ; in some, it may be hoped that you 
will move on in even closer ranks. Your mutual 
friendships are probably stronger and more endur- 
ing than any that you will form hereafter; and 
for those of you who shall live as long as I have, 
classmate will seem a title of kindred hardly less 
near than brother. I trust, too, that to the high 
type of honor and true manliness which belongs to 
your training here, there will be among you no 



THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 



105 



recreants. Let me hope, also, that whatever your 
future pursuits may be, you will all show your- 
selves to be men of culture, lovers of good learn- 
ing, among those pioneer minds that are constantly 
making aggressions upon the realm of the unex- 
plored, and enlarging the area of human knowl- 
edge. Yet more, I earnestly crave for you the 
higher union of God-serving and Christ-following 
men ; and while my firm trust in Christianity will 
not admit a doubt that above the scepticism and 
unbelief through which she now mounts the east- 
ern sky, as the moon through massed and threat- 
ening storm-clouds, she will shine forth conqueror 
and queen, I would have the consecration of our 
University to Christ and the Church renewed in 
each successive class, in token of the harmony 
between true science and an enlightened faith. 
In these things there ought to be no parting of the 
way ; for in the right and good there is but one 
way. 

Meanwhile, as to your several professions and 
modes of life, your way now divides. Whatever 
there has been among you of homogeneousness is 
dissolved. Those of you who will come together 
from year to year, while your love for one another 
will grow stronger, will have less and less in com- 
mon. Your callings and business associations will 
replace the class-stamp by their peculiar brands. 

But, before the way divides, permit me to offer you 
my counsel as to the paths which you may severally 



106 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



take. The choice of a profession, I know, will not 
seem to you an unfit subject for my parting 
address. 

The time was when a college education was con- 
sidered chiefly as a portal to one of the three (so 
called) learned professions. I wish that it were as 
generally the portal to them now, and that they 
retained in full their old title to the epithet 
learned. But the range opened for the choice of 
the highly educated has become much wider. It 
is now beginning to be well understood, on the 
one hand, that it is not the profession that gives 
dignity to the man, but the man to the profession ; 
and, on the other hand, that all honorable callings 
need a large infusion of the highest culture to 
ensure for them the maximum of individual suc- 
cess, and of economical, social, and moral benefit 
to the community. 

As regards commerce, the worth of a liberal 
education was recognized by the late Thomas 
Handasyd Perkins, the first merchant of his day, 
who said that he would rather receive into his 
counting-room a fresh graduate from college, than 
a clerk who had served a four years' apprentice- 
ship. There is no kind or measure of mental 
culture that would not either directly aid the 
farmer in the operations on his estate, or enhance 
his usefulness and beneflcient influence as an 
employer and a citizen. At the same time, the 
architect, the engineer, the machinist, the manu- 



THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 



107 



facturer, unless men of education as well as genius, 
can neither hold, nor deserve, nor adorn important 
places in their respective professions; while on the 
taste, skill, science, and breadth of intellect which 
they bring to their work, we must depend for the 
beauty of design which is in itself an educational 
power of the first order, for the safety and economy 
of transportation and traffic, and for the improved 
methods and agencies that cheapen and multiply 
for general use the products of industry. Journal- 
ism is another profession, honored in the few men 
of large culture and accomplishments who are en- 
gaged in it, yet in many quarters claiming of men 
similarly endowed, redemption from narrowness, 
stupidity, and vulgarity. We need, also, highly 
and specifically educated statesmen and govern- 
ment officials, unless by inveterate, yet not abso- 
lutely immemorial usage, it has become unconstitu- 
tional to fill an office with a well-qualified candidate. 
Had the finances of the country been managed by 
men possessed even of such little knowledge of 
financial science as every graduate of this college 
has the opportunity of acquiring, our present 
national debt would have been less than two-thirds 
what it now is. Whenever our people are driven, 
as they must be ere long, to confer administrative of- 
fices only on men who shall have fitted themselves 
for their duties, and still more, when our bodies of 
electors shall choose statesmen to represent them, 
instead of putting their suffrages at the disposal of 



108 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



adroit and self-seeking politicians, the public ser- 
vice will present an honorable career for our liber- 
ally educated young men. 

I would urge you, my friends, to take into your 
view the largest scope in determining what you 
will choose for your life-work. If your preference 
be for a calling which few liberally educated men 
have entered, so much the better ; for while you 
will lose nothing for yourselves, you may help to 
elevate the* calling, and to raise the standard of 
mind and character for those who shall afterward 
enter it. 

In choosing your profession, you need to take at 
the outset the view of life which you will take at its 
close. Your prime object in that case will be not 
position, which, nevertheless, depends not on your 
profession, but on your fitness for it and diligence in 
it; nor yet emolument, which, whatever appearances 
there may be to the contrary, will generally de- 
pend on the same conditions, — for the most lucrative 
calling will keep you poor, if it be not your specific 
calling from God through the talents he has given 
you, and if you do not respond to his calling by integ- 
rity, industry, and enterprise. Your aim should be 
to serve God by serving man. This is well expressed 
in a letter written by the elder Adams, in the year 
succeeding his graduation at this college. " To 
choose rightly," he says, " we should consider in 
what character we can do the most service to our 
fellow-men as well as to ourselves. The man who 



THE CHOICE OF A PBOFESSION. 



109 



lives wholly to himself is of less worth than the cat- 
tle in his barn." In the spirit of these sound words, 
the choice of each of you should be of the pro- 
fession in which he can be the most useful member 
of society. The public has a right to your best 
service. For this end you have been trained here, 
only in part at your own cost, in great part by 
liberal endowments bestowed not for the benefit of 
individuals, but for the public good, — for the edu- 
cation of those destined to fill the leading places in 
their respective communities, to protect and ad- 
vance the highest and most sacred interests, and to 
diffuse intelligence, virtue, and piety. In accept- 
ing these charities of the dead and the living, you 
have given a virtual pledge, that you will live not 
for selfish purposes, but with beneficent aim and 
endeavor, — that you will render back with rich in- 
crease what you have so freely received. 

In order to insure future usefulness, you must 
carefully consult your own tastes and proclivities 
in determining your course. Let it not be deter- 
mined by circumstances, by facilities, by the ex- 
pectations of friends, still less by the hope of find- 
ing or making that congenial for which you feel 
repugnancy. Unless your heart be in your work, 
your whole mind cannot be in it, and you cannot 
by any possibility prepare yourselves for substan- 
tial success or usefulness in it.. 

A man sometimes adopts a profession because 
he thinks he sees his way out of it, — for instance, 



110 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



law, because, though he is sure that he shall find its 
work a drudgery, he can pass directly from it into 
the political arena ; or theology, because, though 
he has no relish for the duties of the pastoral 
office, it may be an avenue to successful labor in 
literature. One who enters a profession with such 
views is sure to fail in it, and — though there are 
well-known and brilliant exceptions — the great 
majority of those who have thus failed suffer life- 
long damage in mental capacity and vigor, and 
flounder on through successive failures in an ob- 
scurity which alone renders their example unin- 
structive except in a limited circle. Among the 
most insignificant and unprofitable members of 
the community are men who entered some pro- 
fession with high ambition, not in it, but beyond 
it, and of whom only a few of their fellow-citizens 
retain the memory of what they began to be. No 
man can obtain eminence, or even success, in a 
profession which he does not love. 

But mere taste is not fitness. Whether you 
have intellectual and moral aptitude for a particu- 
lar profession, you can ascertain only by careful 
self-scrutiny and thorough self-knowledge. For 
this the wide range of our college course furnishes 
ample materials, and herein consists one of the 
chief benefits of an extended and diversified plan 
of study. You leave college with a very inade- 
quate training and discipline in any one depart- 
ment ; but in these four years access has been 



THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. Ill 

sought to your intellect through every avenue. 
All your powers have been tested, in acquisition, 
reasoning, analysis, writing, speaking. You have 
been made more or less conversant with the 
rudiments of every form of professional erudi- 
tion and skill; and you can know, if yow will, 
wherein your aptness lies, and wherein it does not 
lie. 

There may be parts or accessories of a profes- 
sion which seems to you desirable and inviting, 
while you yet lack the capacity to grapple with its 
difficulties, to apprehend its subtilties, or to per- 
form essential portions of its work. A profession 
in which a father has won success and eminence 
may possess strong attractions for a son ; and very 
probably he may have inherited an aptitude for it. 
Our Triennial Catalogue shows many instances of 
this inheritance. Thus of the first eleven Emer- 
sons on our list, nine were clergymen, and for con- 
siderably more than two hundred years, in various 
branches of the family, the profession has been 
transmitted from father to son, with distinguished 
names in every generation. The Sewalls present 
a similar instance in the law. Like distinction in 
surgery gives promise of being realized in the 
fourth generation of the Warrens. But the same 
record furnishes not a few instances of the profes- 
sion in which the father held a foremost place, dis- 
honored in the son who chose it merely as a birth- 
right. The son who would follow his father must 



112 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



first be certain that he is heir of his father's specific 
ability and aptitude. 

Again, do not choose a profession because it- 
seems to be peculiarly useful, unless you are sure 
that you can be useful in it. A good physician is 
an unspeakable blessing to a community ; but not 
a few enter the profession with the best purposes, 
whose most appropriate record is written in the 
bills of mortality. An able teacher holds a place 
second to none in the honor, reverence, and grati- 
tude of his own and succeeding generations ; but 
how many worthy men are there in our schools 
and academies, who are not engineers, but brake- 
men in the progress of good learning ! 

The clerical profession has suffered greatly 
from this mistake. Because piety has been not 
unfitly regarded as an essential qualification for 
the Christian ministry, it has been too often in- 
ferred that every seriously minded young man 
who can, ought to enter it, — as if there were not 
equal need of and room for the exercise of the 
highest religious traits in any and every honorable 
calling, or as if the undue concentration of Chris- 
tian principle and character in one profession 
would not have a most disastrous influence on the 
whole economy of social life. It is urged, indeed, 
that the command to preach the Gospel was the 
parting injunction of our Saviour. True, and it is 
obeyed by every man who does with religious 
fidelity what he is best fitted to do, and commends 



THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 113 

his religion by an upright, pure, and generous life. 
The truly religious shoemaker or carpenter, 
whose capacities are level with his work, does 
much more efficient service — with no counter- 
vailing injury — as a preacher of the Gospel, 
than if he forced himself, through the form of pre- 
liminary training, into the pulpit. 

The error of which I speak has been actualized 
in every denomination by charitable provision for 
the education of its ministers. The money were 
better thrown into the fire. The generous aid of 
a youth in obtaining a college education is one of 
the noblest of charities, — a public more than an 
individual charitj^, — as it affords culture of which, 
in the form in which it can be made the most ser- 
viceable, it may be hoped that the community will 
derive the benefit. The college student is gener- 
ally at the age, always in the condition, in which 
it is natural and fitting that he should be depend- 
ent on his parents ; and if he has none, or has 
those who cannot aid him, in case his merit is 
equal to his need, it is an enviable privilege to fill 
toward him a parent's place. But the graduate or 
professional student has passed the age of natural 
dependence, and, if he be unpropped by kindred, 
it is best for him that he should be thrown upon 
his own resources. If he be fitted for the pulpit, 
he will work his way to it without any organized 
system of charitable aid, — a little later perhaps, 
but, if so, only with a maturity of character, a 



114 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



knowledge of mankind, and a capacity of self-help, 
which will make him wiser, more prudent, and 
more independent in his profession. Moreover, he 
will in that case have received no bribe to bias his 
candid investigation of sacred truth, to bind him 
to the sect that subsidizes him, or to cast obloquy 
and odium upon him if his conscience leads him to 
abandon it. The effect of the system of charitable 
education is to bring into the Christian ministry 
a class of young men, of negatively faultless char- 
acter and of sincere religious principle, but of in- 
ferior ability, who have not energy enough to 
make their own way in the world, and who, in propor- 
tion to the liberality with which their sect fur- 
nishes supplies, lower in that sect the intellectual 
standard of the clerical profession, its efficiency 
and its respectability, and avert from it the view 
of not a few young men of a higher order who 
otherwise would enter it. I know very well that 
this system supports also some who are destined 
to be shining lights of the Church; but, as I have 
said, they would generally prepare themselves for 
the pulpit the better without it, and, in cases 
where this could not be, private munificence would 
never be stinted in rendering to them the needed 
aid. 

To return from this digression, — if digression 
it be, — let me emphatically warn you against a pro- 
fession, however inviting, for which you are not 
conscious of the requisite mental endowments and 



THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 115 



personal qualifications. You have the germs of 
them now, if you are ever going to have them. 
Thus there are some professions which demand a 
scientific training, and these are not for you, if you 
have thus far found in yourself a stubborn inapti- 
tude for scientific reasoning and investigation. 
There are others which require a ready utterance, 
and for these you are unfit, if under the stimu- 
lating influence of college life, you have remained 
slow, hesitating, tongue-tied. There are others 
which require the capacity of easy, fluent, graceful 
literary composition. This you. may develop in 
spite of faults of redundancy, to which every poten- 
tially good young writer is liable, and which practice 
alone can prune away ; but if, when you take your 
pen in hand, neither fresh thought, nor fertile 
fancy, nor ready wit waits on its movements, but 
the best you can write is jejune, dry, frigid, nerve- 
less, there may be other callings in which you will 
achieve eminence, but your pen will never move the 
world, nor win for you a place in it that you can 
covet. You have, undoubtedly, all of you, your 
several proper spheres of service, in which you can 
merit and attain success and reputation, perhaps 
distinction. A great deal is thought and said about 
the inequality of natural endowments. In a college 
class the diversity is probably much greater than 
the inequality ; and your instructors can remember 
not a few instances in which students who up to 
a certain point had seemed hopelessly obtuse and 



116 



BA CCA LA UREA TE SERMONS. 



incapable, have manifested more than talent, even 
genius, when they reached a part of the curriculum 
corresponding to their peculiar type of intellect. 
Talents are specific fitnesses, and the distribution 
of them is God's plan for such a division of labor 
that no essential department of service need be un- 
derstocked or overstocked. By entering a profes- 
sion for which you have not the requisite endow- 
ments, you derange the fitness ordained by a 
higher than human wisdom ; and whenever it is 
sought by forced means to replenish the ranks of 
any one profession, or whenever there are in the 
course of events adventitious circumstances that 
give to a profession a prestige beyond that of its 
legitimate duties, immunities, and rewards, the con- 
sequence is its decline in real merit, dignity, and 
efficiency, its crippling and maiming as a member 
of the body politic, and a corresponding loss to the 
community of its best service and influence. 

I would next advise you, while you make your 
choice of a profession with the utmost care and de- 
liberation, to make it with the purpose of adhering 
to it. There will be a period in your novitiate 
when the zest of new enthusiasm will have passed 
away, and the difficulties before you will show 
themselves in their full magnitude, Such a crisis 
occurs in every profession, and you will not evade 
it by entering upon a new career. It is simply one 
benignant phasis of the universal law, that nothing 
great can be reached without arduous effort, — 



THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 117 



an effort which will quadruple your vigor for your 
life-work. 

Finally, while you choose your profession, mean- 
ing to excel in it, determine at the same time that 
you will be its master, not its slave. There are 
many men who sink themselves wholly in their call- 
ings. They regard themselves as mere factors or 
agencies in the machinery of social life, as simply 
merchants, lawyers, doctors, or preachers, not as 
pre-eminently men who exercise their manhood in 
these several avocations. See that you have a per- 
sonality all your own, large and deep enough to 
take in and enclose your calling, so that you shall 
be a man outside of it, not a mill-horse in it. Thus 
only can you grow in mind, soul, character. As a 
mere professional man, and nothing more, you may 
grow in the knowledge of details, in skill, in adroit- 
ness ; but your manhood will dwindle, your soul 
will shrivel, and what might have been individual 
in you will be obliterated. 

My friends of the graduating class, with these 
counsels accept my fervent congratulations and best 
wishes. Lose not thought of us ; for in the throng 
of those who will succeed you we shall not forget 
you. There is not one of you, whose good report 
will not gladden us, whose future eminence will 
not give us relief and solace in toil and weariness. 
Above all, we crave for you such a pilgrimage 
among things seen and temporal as must issue in 
fulness of joy in the realm of things unseen and 



118 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



eternal. May God bless you, guide you, keep you; 
and may you so learn of your Saviour and follow 
him, that neither life nor death can separate you 
from his love. 



IX. 



THE TRUE AIM. 

<1872). 

**I press toward the mark." — Philippians iii. 14, 

I AM less what I seem to be than what I aim to 
be. What I seem to be may have been shaped by 
a past beyond my control, or by exterior circum- 
stances for which I am in no wise accountable ; but 
if so, my determined purpose will reject in part, in 
part assimilate whatever seems opposed to it, as 
the germinating seed spurns the earth-clods that 
press it down, and feeds on their vitalizing juices. 
Those of us who have lived many years, pursuing 
our ideals all the time, are as far as in youth from 
overtaking them, if they are pure and high. We 
are conscious of a better self than has ever been able 
to show itself, — of a hidden life, nobler than the 
life that has been made manifest, which needs to be 
wholly unearthed to appear all that it is. We 
therefore feel more and more that in the sight of 
God, and, consequently, in our own righteous self- 
judgment, we are what we strive and aspire to be. 
I know not whether to believe or hope that this 



120 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



discrepancy between endeavor and attainment will 
be overcome, even in the heavenly life. However 
that may be, it is here at once the goal and the joy 
of arduous effort. It will not let us rest ; but it 
gives us a more blissful repose of spirit in incessant 
movement onward, upward. To old and young 
alike it is a prophecy of immortality ; and to the 
young it is a prophecy covering the many earthly 
years that may intervene between the present and 
the life eternal. 

To the young men whom I address for the last 
time to-day, I wish I could say with the emphasis 
I feel, You are what you aim to be ; your aims are 
the most real, substantial, enduring thing about 
you ; and they unite in close fraternity those who 
are thought to differ widely in character, while 
they often create an impassable barrier between 
those who bear much outward resemblance to one 
another. 

But here let it be distinctly understood what 
an aim is. It is more* much more than in- 
tention or desire. As to intention and desire, 
there is no great difference among you. You all 
mean to be good men, honest, honorable, generous ; 
and even if any of you have transgressed the rules 
of rigid morality under the stress of strong temp- 
tation, and in the exuberance of youthful passion, 
you do not mean to prolong immoralities of any 
kind. But good intentions are so far from being 
an index of character that they are current in the 



THE TRUE AIM. 



121 



lowest moral strata of society. You all, too, have 
similiar desires for respectability, prosperity, a 
competence at least, affluence if possible. But the 
aim that makes the character is that in which a 
man says within himself, " This one thing I will 
obtain, accomplish, or become, or I will sink and 
die in the endeavor." 

Let us look for a moment at the diversities of 
character as indicated, and in the young prophesied, 
by the aims with which different persons start in 
life. There are, first — I trust, however, not among 
you — the utterly aimless. "It doth not appear 
what they shall be," but small men at best, very 
probably bad men. In youth they are character- 
ized by the ease with which they are influenced, 
by their evading of labor and responsibility, by 
their self-forgetting absorption in the pleasure of 
the moment, by their ennui when thrown upon 
their own resources. The suppleness of their 
nature makes them pleasant and often helpful 
companions, and under favorable circumstances 
they may lead harmless lives, and may acquire rep- 
utation for a certain negative goodness. But 
they are mere drift-wood on the current of society, 
are always liable to be caught up in the eddies of 
dissipation and vice ; and if so, they lack strength 
to strike out again into smoother waters, and are 
whirled about unresistingly, till they sink beneath 
the flood. Let not the aimless youth imagine that, 
because innocent, he is safe. His innocence is 



122 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



that of circumstance, not of character. He has 
no holding ground. He can promise himself no 
future. His only security is to rouse himself from 
his apathy while yet he may, to give himself an 
aim, to set before himself a mark, and to nerve 
himself to press toward it with strenuous en- 
deavor. 

Others there are who enter life with the pre- 
dominant purpose of gain. Whatever else they may 
attain or forfeit, they are determined to be rich. 
The strong probability is that they will reach their 
aim ; if they fail, they will fail by overreaching it. 
But in them will be fulfilled the saying of the 
Psalmist, " He gave them their request, but sent 
leanness into their soul." In a young man, even 
vice is hardly so sordid, so degrading to mind and 
character, as the greed of gain. It burns out every 
noble aspiration, every generous impulse. It vul- 
garizes the very face and voice, and in a man of 
liberal culture it obliterates every token of noble 
breeding, and replaces the university stamp by the 
trade-mark. 

There are others whose foremost aim is profes- 
sional success and eminence. They, however, sel- 
dom win the highest places, yet seldom remain in 
the lowest. Ambition, diligence, adroitness in 
seizing opportunities, the capacity that grows from 
concentrated attention and continuous effort, ob- 
tain their commensurate reward. But no man is 
great in his profession who does not aim at some- 



THE TBUE AIM. 



123 



thing above and beyond it. What we call the liber- 
al professions merit the name, not because exclusive 
devotion to them liberalizes a man, but because 
they themselves have the broadest hospitality, and 
admit to alliance and co-operation every conceiv- 
able attainment of mind and character. Thus there 
are gifts and graces which would not enable one to 
be a better coppersmith, or candle-maker, or grocer; 
but I know of nothing worth learning, having or 
being, which might not contribute to one's excel- 
lence as a lawyer or a physician, a teacher or a clergy- 
man. Therefore is it that a man who limits his 
aim to professional success narrows the range even 
of his professional training and endowments. He 
thus belongs at best to the second class in his own 
calling, and is known, in the law, as a sharp and 
subtle practitioner; in medicine, as having more 
skill than science ; in the class-room, as a directing 
rather than an inspiring mind ; in the pulpit, as no 
mean sermon-wright, but as lacking the power of 
soul upon soul. 

I have said enough of lower aims. Let us then 
turn our thoughts to the aim which includes all 
others that are worthy your endeavor. That aim 
is the perfection of your own being, of your self- 
hood, the making of yourselves the most and the 
best that you can, — the development of the greatest 
possible mass of mind, quantity of character, capaci- 
ty of thinking, feeling, doing, enjoying. Do you say 
that this is an indefinite statement ? To my mind 



124 



BA CCA LA UREA TE SERMONS. 



it is not only definite, but significant of the most 
important differences of character that are ever 
presented to our view. It seems to me that there 
are many persons who think of themselves merely 
as instruments adapted to subserve certain ends, not 
as beings endowed with an independent inward life ; 
and they estimate attainments of all kinds solely 
with reference to the" specific ends they have in 
view. Thus they perceive the importance of such 
virtues as have a market value, such as may bring 
them reputation or profit ; but they have no con- 
ception of that interior self-culture which bears no 
visible or tangible fruit. They readily discipline 
the special faculties and pursue the special studies 
which they expect to need in their peculiar calling 
or mode of life, but care not for largeness of mind 
in all directions, and have no respect for any knowl- 
edge which they cannot coin into immediate utili- 
ties. 

On the other hand, there are those — no less 
heedful as to what they need to turn to daily ac- 
count — who deem all the virtues within their scope, 
and are as solicitous for those on which no eye but 
God's can ever look as for those which all the 
world can see ; who regard every power and faculty 
as worthy of all the cultivation they can give it, and 
who prize all knowledge and every form of wisdom, 
whether it have or have not any bearing on their 
outward calling and condition. 

The former of these two classes are mere agen- 



THE TRITE AIM. 



125 



cies, activities, vitalized and intelligent machines, 
fitting into their place in the social economy as 
spokes in a wheel or timbers in the frame of a 
house, but good for nothing in any other relation 
or for any other purpose, holding no position in the 
commonwealth of minds and souls. To name their 
profession is to describe them adequately. They 
have no inward life that is recognized even by their 
own consciouness. Those of the latter class are, 
first and chief of all, men, — endowed with a life 
which manifests, but does not exhaust itself in a 
given outward place or profession, but which from 
its very fulness is more than adequate for whatever 
place they occupy, for whatever work they do, 
nay, makes them masters, ruling spirits, men of 
mark, in their respective callings, and capable of 
doing much more beside, — of exercising extended 
and varied influence, of serving God by serving 
their generation and their race. 

Let us now consider in detail some of the ele- 
ments of this higher life which I would set before 
you as your only worthy aim. In the first place, 
there should be the aim at moral perfection. I 
have often spoken, both in the pulpit and the class- 
room, of the vast wealth of moral significance 
stowed away in the structure and history of words. 
The Greek verb that is always rendered sin in the 
New Testament has for its primary meaning — 
a sense in which it is used by the classic authors — 
to miss the mark; thus recognizing faultless per- 



126 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



fection as man's true mark and goal, of which 
every instance of wrong-doing is a failure. We 
always know what is right. When we say we are 
in doubt, our real doubt is whether it is worth our ^ 
while to do the right precisely, to the utmost, and 
at all hazards, or whether it may not be consistent 
with character and credit to make what is called a 
selfish, but what is really a self-sacrificing com- 
promise with the right. Many do thus compromise, 
and yet maintain and deserve the reputation of 
good men. But they are not the best men. Nor 
can they be sure of themselves ; for while there are * 
not a few who never go beyond very slight deflec- 
tions from the right, those who make the broadest 
departures have at the outset no intention or 
expectation of so doing, but are led out of the way 
by little and little, — each added deviation so slight 
as to give them no alarm. 

If, with my observation and experience of life, 
I could stand where you now stand, " at the divi- 
ding of the way," and were the maximum of 
happiness in this world my supreme desire, I 
should determine, as more essential than all things 
else, that I would not suffer myself in a single 
instance to modify, or tamper with, my conviction 
of the right. You now, in the fulness of young 
life and budding hope, have many resources for 
happiness, and do not feel as you will your depend- 
ence on your own self-respect for permanent and 
satisfying felicity. But if you live many years, 



THE TRUE AIM. 



127 



the time will come when these resources will be 
sadly scanted. You will have won all the suc- 
cesses within your reach. The ranks of your 
kindred and intimates will be thinned ; there will 
be vacant places very near your heart, and in the 
larger circle and the younger world you will feel 
that your society is less and less sought and 
desired. The inevitable doom of decrease and de- 
cline will rest on your whole earthly heritage. 
You will be thrown, to a degree which you hardly 
know now, upon your own self-consciousness, 
remembered and present. Then, if you can look 
back upon a life of pure intent and purpose strenu- 
ously right, upon an aim — ever more nearly real- 
ized — toward the Christian ideal of excellence, it 
will be of more worth to you than all else beside. 
Memory will feed the torch of hope. Conscience 
will be to you the voice of an approving and justi- 
fying God, — "Well done, good and faithful ser- 
vant." Your last days will be your best days. 
Your decline will be culmination. The dawn will 
brighten as the shadows lengthen. The morning 
twilight of the eternal day will blend with your 
evening twilight, and hejiven will give you im- 
measurably more than earth can take away. 

But the thickening stars in recent classes on 
our triennial record remind you that for not a few 
of you but a brief earthly space may remain ; that 
for some of you the sun will be eclipsed in the 
morning, for others still, at noon-day. Then every 



128 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



lower aim will have failed you ; you will enter the 
realm of translated spirits with none of the earthly 
supports and resources in which you had put your 
trust; you will stand self-revealed to your own 
consciousness, in the felt presence of the eye that 
searches the depths of every soul. But if, while 
here, you have pressed toward the mark of high 
moral excellence; if steadfast adherence to the 
right has been your ruling aim and endeavor, — 
you have an aim on which no failure rests; it is 
recognized in its integrity by the all-merciful 
Judge, — by him who will pardon your unwilling 
frailty, and place you in that heavenly way of 
righteousness, on which you will move no longer 
with halting step and intermitted progress, but as 
with winged feet, in the blessed society of the 
unfallen and the redeemed. 

But why need I direct your thoughts to old 
age or death ? The strenuous aim at perfection is 
its own immediate reward ; the prize is enwrapped 
in the very endeavor ; and, however bright and 
glad may be the future that seems opening to any 
of you, the happiest man among you, from this 
day onward, is he who, with the most resolute 
purpose, devotes himself to the pursuit of the 
right, determined to evade no duty, to shrink from 
no obligation, and to lead an inward life in which 
he would want to make no erasure or change, 
were it to be phototyped for the eyes of the 
whole universe. 



THE TRUE AIM. 



129 



I will only add on this head, that I know of no 
guide to such a life except Jesus Christ, no strength 
adequate to it except that to whose fountain he 
holds the key. When, therefore, I ask you to aim 
at perfection, I ask you to be the loyal and loving 
followers of him whom to follow is to know, and 
whom thus to know is in itself eternal life. 

I would, in the next place, urge you to aim at 
a thorough and life-long education. Do not over- 
rate what has been done for you here. If you have 
been faithful in your college work, you have 
learned how to study, and what to study. You 
have had the vast field of knowledge mapped out 
before you, and have stopped at here and there 
a station long enough to learn something of the 
quality and the richness of the circumjacent region. 
In further exploring this field, there are two op- 
posite errors which you must shun, — the one, that 
of being too exclusively specific in your reading 
and study ; the other, that of being too general. 
By the former, you belittle and cramp your intel- 
lectual powers; you get keenness without breadth, 
skill without depth, conversance with the details 
of some single science, without any apprehension 
of its true place and relations with reference to 
other departments of knowledge. On the other 
hand, general reading, without definite plan, pur- 
pose, or principle, may give you a great deal of 
miscellaneous knowledge ; but it will be shallow 
and superficial. You will have no command even 



130 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



of your own resources. The facts, truths, and 
ideas deposited at hap-hazard in your memory will 
not lie there in any serviceable order. Your 
knowledge will never crystallize into science or 
wisdom. Indeed, there are hardly any minds more 
utterly vapid and inefficient than those of omnivo- 
rous readers. I have known those who, the more 
they read, seemed only the less capable of thinking, 
reasoning, or teaching, and who, if they undertook 
to instruct others, showed that their riches had re- 
duced them to beggarly shiftlessness, so they could 
only string together ill-digested fragments of other 
men's ideas, pointless, irrelevant and mystifying. 

For those of you who are to be professional 
men, your respective professions should, of course, 
fittingly give direction and tone to your study, 
but should in no wise limit it. Indeed, as I have 
already intimated, you cannot take a foremost 
place in your own profession, unless you merit and 
command respect and confidence by acquisition 
and ability outside of it. Those of you who enter 
on mercantile or active life will have less time at 
your disposal for books ; but will and taste can al- 
ways create opportunity, and your scanty leisure, 
wisely husbanded, may yield you an ample revenue. 
You will find it to your profit to select some one de- 
partment of literature or science in which you are 
determined to be well-read and level with the 
newest thought of the time ; while beyond this 
specialty you will avail yourselves of the means of 
a more general culture. 



THE TRUE AIM. 



131 



Deem no knowledge worthless, and spurn no 
casual source of knowledge. The only book on a 
tavern or steamboat table, or a conversation with 
a fellow-traveller on a subject entirely alien from 
your accustomed range of thought, may furnish in- 
formation or suggest ideas that will be for your 
enduring benefit, — perhaps, in some unforeseen con- 
tingency, for your specific and essential service. 
Daniel Webster remarked, not long before his 
death, that many of the best materials for his argu- 
ments on a vast variety of subjects, in the senate 
and at the bar, had been thus casually acquired, 
and that he had often in these abnormal ways 
gleaned important knowledge, which, when needed 
for immediate use, would not have been within his 
reach. There is no knowledge of any kind what- 
ever, which, even though it subserve no specific 
purpose, may not at some point bring you either 
into more intimate communion with the Creator in 
his works, or into better acquaintance with man 
through his industries, or into more pleasant and 
serviceable relations with individual men on the 
common ground thus won. Still more, while I 
would not have you read indiscriminately when 
you can have your choice of books, there is hardly 
any form of literature, or any book or article, if 
only pure, however feeble or ephemeral, that may 
not suggest seedling thoughts, which in an active 
and cultivated mind will mature into richer fruit 
than could ever have ripened in the intellect from 



132 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



which, they issued. Now there are in this regard 
two very different classes of minds. There are 
those that seem to close instinctively against what- 
ever does not belong to their own specialty. There 
are those that entertain all strangers in respectable 
attire because they may be " entertaining angels 
unawares ; " and many are the angel-guests whom 
they thus lodge and never suffer to depart. Aim, 
then, for knowledge and learning both special and 
general ; and, above all, make it truly yours by 
analysis, reflection, assimilation with the substance 
of your own intellectual being. 

With these two aims, first, for the highest 
standard of excellence, and — second only to this 
— for the largest attainable amount of knowledge 
and wisdom, you are constantly increasing your 
mass of being, your quantity of intellectual and 
spiritual life ; and in corresponding proportion 
you are providing for your own enduring and 
growing happiness. As, with the same material 
surroundings, the sentient enjoyment of the lower 
orders of animals depends on their more or less 
fully developed vitality, so, with the same ele- 
ments of happiness, the revenue of the human 
being is contingent on his measure of capacity, 
mental and moral. He who carries the largest 
vessel to the fountain can draw the most from 
it ; and he who carries to it a crazy, broken 
bucket, that can hold no water, will thirst while 
those around him drink their fill. 



THE TRUE AIM. 



133 



One more aim. Regard it as your calling to 
do all the good you can in every form and way. 
Make it your prime ambition to be useful. I 
know that it will sometimes interfere with other 
ambitions. The time and thought spent in kind 
offices might often further more selfish ends. You 
may occupy positions in which the alternative will 
seem to be service or fame. If so, let service have 
the precedence, yea, even were it only for your own 
sakes; for you will always gain more than you 
bestow. You will verify in your experience the 
saying of Solomon, " The liberal soul shall be 
made fat, and he that watereth shall be watered 
also himself." The divine Teacher tells us that 
not what goes into the mouth, but what comes out 
of it, defiles a man ; and the converse of this is 
equally true as to mouth and hand, mind and 
heart. What goes from you in kind words and 
deeds, enriches, amplifies, ennobles you as nothing 
else can. Benevolence develops resources, inspires 
wise counsels, and quickens the powers no less 
than the affections. The wars of our own time 
have not matured in those who have served in 
them a tithe of the ability, the genius, that has 
been, I will not say called into exercise, but cre- 
ated, in the missions of mercy to the battle-fields 
and the hospitals ; and if posterity shall charge its 
memory with any individual names in connection 
with these wars, it will be with the heroes and 
heroines that have sought to save, not to destroy. 



134 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



In urging upon you beneficence as a prime aim, 
I do not refer to pecuniary benefits. Some of you 
will no doubt have, in this direction, but limited 
means. But there are many services which a 
liberally educated man has the constant opportu- 
nity of rendering, such as the care of educational 
institutions and interests, the advice and encour- 
agement of incipient students and those struggling 
under embarassments and difficulties, aid in liter- 
ary undertakings, efforts to raise the standard of 
culture in the surrounding community. A schol- 
arly man may shut himself up to his own pursuits, 
in haughty or selfish isolation, with the purpose of 
achieving for himself superior position or reputa- 
tion ; or he may make himself felt as the centre of 
a constantly enlarging circle of benignant influ- 
ence in behalf of good learning and general intelli- 
gence. In the former case, his success is problem- 
atic, and if realized, very probably unfruitful; 
in the latter, his success is certain, immediate, and 
full of blessed fruits for himself, no less than 
for those among whom he dwells. 

I have thus set before you the aims with which 
I earnestly hope and pray that you may start on 
your several life-paths, — the highest standard of 
character, the utmost attainable measure of knowl- 
edge, and the most persevering fidelity in the offices 
of a liberal-minded and large-hearted beneficence. 

Forget not, that while you are just entering on 
an earthly, you have already entered on an eternal 



THE TRUE AIM. 



135 



career. These are the aims which belong equally 
to the life on this and on the farther side of the 
grave, — the aims, which, so far from suspending, 
you will pursue with only intenser fervor when 
you pass beyond these time-shadows. The grave 
that has just closed over one but lately with you * 
adds a force beyond any words of mine to the 
exhortation, that you so live among things seen 
and temporal as you would hope to live among 
things unseen and eternal. While you cherish 
loving memories of the classmate who has gone 
from you, and recall in him the traits that at once 
commended him to your esteem and affection, and 
gave rich promise of usefulness and honor, let his 
sudden departure, as it has opened, keep open to 
your aim and endeavor the life beyond death, 
where all that is worthily achieved and attained 
on earth receives the seal of immortality. 

I trust that in mind and character you have 
won here much that cannot die, — that of your col- 
lege-life there are happy memories not only for 
future years in this world, but also for heaven 
and eternity. May God Almighty lead you and 
bless you. May his spirit give you light, peace and 
joy. May the faith of Christ be your safeguard in 
temptation, your support in trial, your assurance 
and pledge of the life everlasting; and may his 
love and benediction be with you now and ever- 
more. 

*Otis Everett Allen, who died June 8, 1872. 



X. 



TREASURES IN HEAVFN. 

(1873.) 

"Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." — Mat. vi.20. 

We pity or despise the man who has money, 
and is too mean to use it, or who possesses objects 
of taste, yet lacks the power of appreciating or 
enjoying them. Still more, if the miser's money 
would increase by being spent, or the works of 
nature or art grow more rich and beautiful through 
the ministry of the eye that feasted on their 
beauty, should we marvel at the stolidity of him 
who could possess them without using or enjoying 
them. May not some of us justly lay ourselves 
open to animadversion on not unlike grounds? 
Our beliefs, our hopes may be packed away in 
archives of memory, whence we shall never take 
them out for use, or held as possessions to be jeal- 
ously defended, but never enjoyed ; while by use 
they are amplified and intensified, by enjoyment 
made beautiful and fruitful. 

Most of us not only believe in human immor- 
tality, but have a certain horror for those who 



TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 137 



deny it. We cannot brook the thought of annihi- 
lation. Even those of us who are willing to cut 
ourselves adrift from Christianity take with us 
into the outside world the best of its gifts, the im- 
mortal life which, as I believe, is brought into 
clear light first and only in the Gospel. But are 
we not prone, rather to lay this hope away for 
contingent needs in the darker experiences of life, 
and under the shadow of death, than to put it to 
current use, and thus to make it a present and 
perpetual joy ? The consequence is, that when we 
most need it, because it has been suffered to 
remain unfamiliar, it is less clear and strong than 
we desire ; whereas, if utilized, it would have 
grown more and more vivid, — if rendered familiar, 
it would have become, if not in logical strictness, 
yet virtually, an element of our consciousness. 

Our earthly future has an immense power over 
our present ; why should our eternal future have 
less power ? We make careful and costly provis- 
ion for what we expect will be our destiny here ; 
why less, for the destiny which may be nearer than 
any of the epochs to which we are wont to look 
forward ? 

I address young men entering, full of promise 
and hope, on honorable careers, in literature, art, 
commerce, and professional life. I should be sorry 
to know that there is one of you who does not 
believe himself immortal, and would not cling to 
this belief with even agonizing earnestness, were it 



138 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



seriously assailed or threatened. Why should not 
your immortality constitute an essential element 
in your aims, plans and endeavors? You know 
how persistent are the habits and proclivities of 
mind and character formed in youth, with what 
increasing difficulty they are changed, nay, how 
little there is of the will to change them. You 
find that they survive the extremest vicissitudes 
of circumstance and condition. Must not the 
same laws extend into the life hereafter? Must 
you not take with you the traits, mental and 
moral, which you have formed here ? Have you 
any reason to suppose that they will suffer change 
in death ? Immortality, if it mean anything, means 
the continuous identity of being ;. else it is not 
immortality, but annihilation of the being that 
was, and the substitution of a new being to bear 
his name and fill his place. But if you are really 
the same being on either side of the death-river, 
there is no need that you go hence poor and bare. 
There is wealth which you may carry with you, if 
you will acquire it here ; and, above all, there are 
wealth-producing energies of mind and character 
— powers, tastes, tendencies, virtues, loves — which 
you may so train and cultivate here, that they 
shall start you on high vantage-ground- in the 
unseen world, fit you to utilize its opportunities, 
to harvest its fruits, to enjoy its society, to hold an 
honored place in its worthy fellowships. At the 
same time this wealth is the most availing provis- 



TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 



139 



ion for your earthly well-being ; these wealth- 
producing energies are those which will yield you 
the largest revenue of earthly honor and happi- 
ness. 

Let me ask you to pass in review with me some 
of the elements of this enduring wealth, portions 
of which, I trust, you have been accumulating 
during these years that we have passed together, 
and which, I hope and pray, may ever remain fore- 
most in your esteem and endeavor. 

First of all, let it be borne in mind that what- 
ever of moral and spiritual worth and capacity you 
have gained, you have gained for eternity. I 
trust that in this regard your college-life has not 
been fruitless. While there are exceptions (and 
they, perhaps, numerous enough to give some color 
of truthfulness to those who think ill of us), I am 
year by year greatly impressed by the growth of 
character in the right direction, in the succes- 
sive classes that go from us. I have no doubt 
that the greater part of you carry hence a 
measure of self-respect, of honorable feeling, of 
high purpose, of the will and power to resist 
and overcome wrong and evil, and thus of all 
the elements of true manhood, far greater than you 
could have acquired under any other auspices. I 
rejoice in all the good scholarship that is developed 
here ; but I believe that our system — in which I in- 
clude with emphasis the mutual influence of student 



140 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



upon student, and the action of collective opinion 
upon individual character — forms many more true 
and high-minded men than it makes accomplished 
scholars, — ennobling, for their lives long, not a few 
who, as to their literary pursuits, have taken for 
their motto, 

" He that is low need fear no fall." 

But how would this diligence and thrift as to 
the moral and spiritual life be stimulated by an 
abiding sense of its everlasting worth and efficacy ! 
If you will but say, each within himself, " As I live 
and die here, I must resume my being in the life to 
come ; the forces of character that urge me here 
must start me on my eternal career ; the wealth of 
soul which I accumulate here must be my capital 
in my new abode," — you could need no other, you 
could have no surer impulse in every walk of duty, 
in every exercise of active virtue. 

As I strive to enter in thought into the future 
life, I cannot but feel that we shall be even more 
dependent there than here on our own self-respect. 
Here there is an outward and a lower life, into 
which one can retreat and shut the doors behind 
him ; and for him who is content with the tawdry 
glitter of the outside walls, or the coarse luxury of 
the basement, and never looks into the inner, upper 
rooms, it may signify but little that they are empty, 
disarranged and ruinous. But when the body falls 
away, — when the walls of sense are trampled down 



TEE A S UEES IN HE A YEN. 141 



in the dust of the grave, — the soul must needs 
appear to itself and to its fellow-spirits just what 
it is. Eternal self-communion, direct and inevitable 
as it cannot be here, must be our destiny; and it 
is of unspeakable moment that this be a communion 
which we can hold with complacency and delight. 
What, then, must be the condition of the soul that 
is foul with the soil of guilt, or the slimy trail of 
meanness, — the soul that knows itself to be con- 
temptible, and expects to save itself from contempt 
here only by living under cover ? If you believe 
in your own continued identity after death, you 
cannot be willing to enter the spiritual world in 
disgrace, even though what merits it may be hidden 
from all the world here. 

Do not forget, with your own identity, God's 
identity. I think that a degree of carelessness as 
to spiritual purity, culture and growth is cherished 
in many minds by a vague trust in the Divine 
mercy, as being more lax and indulgent in other 
spheres of being than it is found to be in this world. 
God is, indeed, infinitely merciful, as truly so now 
and here as he ever will be, and in all time and 
worlds too merciful ever to divorce character from 
destiny, conduct from retribution, virtue from 
happiness, or moral evil from misery. He is the 
same in heaven as on earth, among souls alive from 
the dead as among souls still in the fleshly taber- 
nacle. The law, " As a man soweth so shall he 
reap," is his law always and everywhere. The 



142 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



only conceivable difference is, that the working of 
this law is here sometimes concealed from sight 
and unrecognized in consciousness ; while in the 
life to come every soul must confess and feel its 
power. 

While, then, you rejoice in whatever of moral 
and spiritual good you have attained, let me urge 
you, above all things else, to aim ever higher, with 
the life and precepts of your all-perfect Saviour for 
your guide and goal, and with the assurance that 
in pure, true, faithful iives, in the love and service 
of God and man, in all the finer graces of advanc- 
ing excellence, you are laying up treasures in 
heaven. 

In the next place, I would have you regard 
knowledge, not merely as precious for its earthly 
uses, but as a possession and a joy forever. It 
cannot be that the scholar's aim and endeavor are 
earth-bounded. In the various departments of 
science and literature, you have been, whether you 
knew it or not, tracing the embodied thoughts of 
the Infinite Intelligence, the inspiration of God in 
the soul of man, the vestiges of the Divine provi- 
dence in the government of the universe. You 
have entered on fields of research that will stretch 
on before you at every stage of your eternal pro- 
gress ; for how can any avenue of knowledge be 
closed by the opening of the soul's prison-gates, — 
by the downfall of these fleshly walls which only 
circumscribe thought, imagination and intellectual 



TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 



143 



enterprise ? So far from this, we may well con- 
ceive that the direction which the mind has 
assumed here will determine its favorite pursuit in 
the infinite range of its eternal career. There the 
introspective philosopher will be ever learning, in 
his clarified consciousness and beatific experience, 
more and more of the powers and limitations of 
the finite mind, its laws and its methods, its rela- 
tions to nature, to fellow-beings, and to its Author. 
There the student of the works of God may take 
the wings of the morning, may glance from star to 
star, may trace omnipresent law from bound to 
bound of the universe ; or with microscopic keen- 
ness of vision may follow out the same omnipresent 
law in the minute forms in which Infinite Wisdom 
has globed itself, no less than in world, sun and 
system. There he who has loved to explore Provi- 
dence in history will have spread before him 
records of the omnipotent Providence, in realms of 
being infinite to the finite, finite only to the 
Infinite Mind. 

But what a contrast between the two states ! 
Here our knowledge abuts on impenetrable ignor- 
ance. The more we learn, the wider is the ex- 
panse of the unknown, into which we launch our 
probing thoughts in vain. In every department 
we reach impassable barriers where we set up our 
fence-words — general terms we call them — inde- 
finable, denoting only that with our present imple- 
ments of investigation we can go no farther. 



144 BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



" Lo ! these are a part of His ways ; but how little 
a portion is known of Him!" is ever the lowly- 
confession of true science, which, with instinctive 
modesty, calls itself philosophy, not wisdom, — the 
loving quest, not the fully realized attainment. 
There, philosophy will ripen into wisdom. In our 
ever more intimate conversance with the Supreme 
Intelligence, we shall gain ever profounder and 
broader views of its unveiled mysteries. Devotion 
and love will be cognitive faculties, as bringing us 
into ever closer relation with Him in whom are 
hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge ; 
while larger views of His truth will nourish ever 
more glowing worship and more fervent praise. 

Let no one, then, consider his student-life as 
conterminous with his college-life ; but whatever 
you have gained in knowledge, in the love of 
knowledge, in the capacity of acquiring it, I trust 
you will regard as treasure that will stand the test 
of the death-change, and will form an essential 
element in your eternal well-being. 

Another prominent aim of your academic 
course has been the culture of taste. It were, 
indeed, to be wished that we had a richer appara- 
tus for sesthetic education through the eye, — more 
beauty of form, more works of art, structures that 
would command, not astonishment, but admiration. 
Yet a large portion of your literary training has 
had this end in view ; and even those of you who 
have had the most limited opportunities of travel 



TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 



145 



and personal observation have been enabled to 
enter into the very soul of art, and to behold its 
most authentic embodiment, in the one only 
language whose every utterance is its inbreathing, 
and in writings whose artistical perfectness may 
be approached, hardly equalled, never exceeded. 

I cannot but regard aesthetic culture as pre- 
eminently a training for the higher life, not only 
through its humanizing and refining influences, 
and its natural alliance with all that is generous 
and noble in conduct and character, but because it 
seems to me that, with all that charms and enrapt- 
ures us here, we are but as on the threshold of a 
temple of universal nature, in which myriad- 
formed beauty enshrines and mirrors the joy-giving 
spirit of God. No attribute of the Creator is 
more richly manifest than his love of beauty. In 
him reside the archetypes of all that the eye 
rejoices to behold, — of all the harmonies that float 
in upon the soul, from string or organ, voice of 
man, or bird-song. For all elevated tastes he has 
provided nutriment as profusely as for our most 
imperative lower needs. In the bloom and verdure 
of spring, in the rainbows and sunset clouds of 
summer, in the kaleidoscopic landscape of the 
autumn forest, in frost crystals, sheets and mounds 
of driven snow, and all the hoary majesty of 
winter, his beauty-breathing spirit is drawing ever 
near to our souls, and awakening those sentiments, 
which, even in the undevout, are almost worship, 



146 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



and in the heart that rejoices in his love are an 
unceasing ritual, incense and anthem of praise. 

Let it not be forgotten that man, in the pride 
of his art, is but the copyist, not the creator, and 
least of all the creator when he seems most origi- 
nal. When I have looked on the pictures in 
which human art has reached its supreme per- 
fection, I have felt less the glory of man than the 
praise of God, — I have recognized Divine inspira- 
tion, as I ever rejoice to do in the God-breathed 
written Word. I know that the forms and colors 
that thus grew under human fingers were drawn 
from models fashioned by a higher than human 
art. And if I can be both glad and worshipful in 
presence of these copies, can I suppose myself, in 
the higher life to come, insensible to their origi- 
nals ? Rather, is not the capacity of joy so pure and 
lofty awakened in us here, because there is infinite 
scope and food for it in every portion of that 
universe, in one of whose outlying provinces we 
are cradled, to become, in the resurrection, free of 
all its realms? Thus I must believe; and when 
the author of the Apocalypse lays all of nature 
that we now behold under contribution, and piles 
splendor upon splendor, to shadow forth the glories 
of the New Jerusalem, the very power of painting 
these gorgeous images on the retina of my inward 
vision is to me prophecy and proof of more of 
beauty in heaven than eye has yet seen, or ear 
heard, or heart conceived. 



TREASURES W HEAVEN. 147 



Let not, then, your aesthetic nature — wooed in- 
to activity by classic song and fable — be suffered 
to become quiescent. For many of you art ; for 
many of you Nature, mother and queen of Art; for 
all of you the purer literature of earlier and later 
times, redolent of nature, yet taking shape only 
under the moulding hand of high art, — may 
develop, in ever-growing delicacy and susceptibility, 
the sense of the beautiful, — a faculty inestimably 
precious even for its earthly uses (for without it 
virtue looks unlovely, and holiness lacks grace), 
but, more than all, the jewelled key to infinite 
wealth of the Divine handiwork that shall inspire 
endless praise and adoration in heaven. 

There remains for our consideration a feature of 
your experience which I want to present in an 
aspect which in coming years you will appreciate 
more fully than you can now. I refer to the 
friendships which you have formed here. If 
college-life were good for nothing else, it yet were 
no waste of time to gain the fast, firm, genial, 
lifelong friends that we make in our college years. 
There are no friendships so hearty, so unselfish, so 
unreserved ; and they outlast all others. Like 
generous wine, they improve by keeping, and may 
have their value tested by their year-mark. You 
will find many of my age, or approaching it, who, 
next to their own households, regard their class- 
mates as their nearest kindred. 

But there is a reverse side to this picture. You 



148 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



can hardly hope that your class will be wholly un- 
starred in its first Triennial ; and year by year, as 
you come together, saddened memories will replace 
the forms of those whom you most loved to meet. 
Nor is this all. Of those still upon the earth there 
will be some, dearly cherished, but seldom seen, — 
in distant cities or lands, or, if near, so care-cum- 
bered that they can yield only rare and fragment- 
ary enjoyment of their intercourse, — leaving you 
hungry, not satisfied with their society. Some will 
part next week with warm mutual regard, and yet 
never see one another again upon the earth. There 
is hardly any experience so futile and empty — if we 
look not above this world — as the forming of so 
many sincere and often fervent friendships that 
yield us hardly any revenue, with persons who 
pass out of our sight and our sphere as soon as we 
have learned to prize them. 

But I rejoice to read in this very susceptibility 
to friendship, in this power and tendency to 
multiply heart-bonds of kindred and affinity be- 
yond our capacity of utilizing them, the assurance 
that we are thus laying up treasures in heaven, pro- 
viding friends that shall be ours forever. 

I would have you feel, then, that you lose noth- 
ing and risk nothing by these attachments which 
seems so brief and fruitless ; and when, in after 
years, there shall come over you, with almost pain- 
ful vividness, the remembrance of some early 
friend, long unseen, perhaps never to be seen again 



TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 149 

in this world, let it be as a breath on the wind- 
harp of prophecy, — let memory merge itself in 
hope, — let the heart turn for its satisfaction to that 
home, 

" Where— o'er bright gates inscribed no more to part — 
Soul springs to soul, and heart unites with heart." 

These, then — moral culture, knowledge, taste, 
friendship — are among the imperishable treasures 
which you may carry with you from your college 
life. They are your best earthly treasures. See 
that they grow with every coming year. What- 
ever your avocations, regard these as your high 
calling from God, as the work, the aim, the ruling 
purpose of life, — purity and sanctity of spirit and 
character ; knowledge that, as fast as it is acquired, 
shall be transmuted into wisdom ; love for all that 
is beautiful in nature and art ; friendships so loyal 
and unselfish that neither time, nor distance, nor 
death can dissolve them. 

I congratulate you on all the honor that you 
have worthily won, on all the happy memories 
which you will carry from these halls, on the 
avenues to success and eminence that are opening 
before you. Take with you, for each and all, my 
fervent good wishes. May God keep and guide 
you. May his Word and his Spirit give law to 
your lives. May his Gospel feed in you the faith 
and hope through which you will commence on 



150 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

earth the life everlasting. May you so pass through 
things seen and temporal, that you may attain ful- 
ness of joy in the realm of things unseen and 
eternal. 



XI. 



HEBREW, GREEK, AND LATIN. 

(1874.) 

" Hebrew, Greek, and Latin."— John xix. 20. 

The inscription over the cross was written in 
these languages, as representiDg the three cosmopo- 
litan nationalities of the time, — the Jews, most 
numerous, indeed, in their own metropolis, yet 
swarming everywhere ; the Greeks, their states 
conquered and dismembered, themselves — whether 
as slaves or adventurers — carrying their arts, hu- 
anities, and vices through the whole extent of 
Southern Europe and Western Asia ; the Romans, 
in civil and military occupancy of all important 
posts in the civilized world. These languages were 
and are typical of the nations that employed them, 
— emblematic of their several styles of culture : 
'the Hebrew, though harsh, sonorous; though rude, 
grand ; though meagre, lending fit utterance for 
the loftiest thought and feeling ; — the Greek, the 
counterpart to the ear of the fairest scenes on which 
human eye has ever rested ; — the Latin, terse, 
rigid, and intense, with no loose joints or feeble 
idioms. Thus we have the Hebrew people pre- 



152 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



eminently religious ; even when idolatrous, in sad 
earnest; and, except in those early episodes of 
false worship, true to the God of their fathers as 
no other nation has ever been ; — the Greeks, in 
art, taste, and elegant culture unequalled in their 
own time, unsurpassed in all time ; — the Romans, 
until foreign grafts outgrew the native stock, law- 
giving, because law-abiding; conquerors, because 
self-mastered ; kingly, because loyal. 

Most fittingly were these languages united over 
the cross ; for the cultures which they represent are 
blended and unified in the character formed under 
the shadow, or rather in the guiding light, of the 
cross. I have named them for my text, as indicat- 
ing the scholar's true aim and culture. 

I. The Hebrew leads, and must lead. Religion 
must be queen* or she has no place. She must 
rule the house, or leave it. In a merely intellec- 
tual aspect, it is no small loss that he sustains who 
neglects the records of our religion; for in the 
Scriptures, if nothing else, we have the exhaust- 
less repository of great thoughts, the feeder of 
lofty imaginings, the mine where one always unearths 
more than he seeks, — gold when he digs for silver, 
— rubies, emeralds, and diamonds when he looks 
for gold. What surpassing genius has the Sacred 
Word nourished and fructified ! Bunyan's prose- 
epic of Pilgrim's Progress — in some aspects the 
greatest work in our language, probably more read, 
oftener re-perused, and by a larger range of ages 



HEBREW, GREEK, AND LATIN. 



153 



and conditions, than any book but the Bible — 
draws from the Bible all its forms and colors, its 
imagery, its sweetness, its strength. Nor do we 
less feel the pre-eminence of our sacred source of 
inspiration, when Milton, in the only other English 
epic worthy of the name, blends from his affluent 
learning an untold wealth of classic lore with 
Christian thought and imagery, only to show how 
thin and feeble is the flow of Castalia and Helicon 
compared with the rush and swell of the waters of 
Zion. 

But the scholar needs more than the literature 
of the Bible. He has his providential mission as 
exemplar, instructor, guide of the less privileged. 
His culture, for good or for evil, raises him above 
his fellows. His light, whether with baleful or 
benignant ray, is set where it cannot be hidden. 
His tone of thought and feeling is diffused farther 
than he can trace. In many of our New England 
villages, and in special circles even in our large 
cities, you will see the foremost mind reproduced 
on every hand, its opinions unconsciously imbibed, 
its moral sympathies and proclivities spontaneously 
imitated, its tastes made dominant. Such a posi- 
tion many of you, my friends, will hold. Are you 
fit for it, if you lack God's best gifts ? If religion 
be not a name, but a divine and eternal reality, can 
you fill your due place in society without its con- 
secration and its power ? 

Our age demands more in this direction than was 



154 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



ever before required of leading minds. There is 
an intense and pervading secularism. We can ac- 
count for it, indeed ; but it none the less needs to be 
counteracted and overcome. It is owing, no doubt, 
to the vast material progress of our time, to steam 
and telegraph, to the awakening from their age- 
long slumber, and harnessing to human industries, 
of giant world-forces. The living spirit in the 
wheels — the living, shaping spirit of God in the 
works of man — is ignored by the multitude, and 
craves to be recognized, enthroned, adored. It is 
for the master-minds of the age to redeem our cul- 
minating civilization from the godlessness which 
will be its ruin, to make men feel the power of a 
higher life than that which lives by bread alone, to 
convert the multitudinous clangor of the world's 
industry into a sublime rhythm of praise to the All- 
Inspirer and All-Giver. We want Christians, not 
only as professional teachers of religion, but even 
more, in the walks of active service, — men who 
shall show a working piety ; who shall be thoroughly 
in the world, yet as thoroughly above the world ; 
who shall demonstrate the possibility of the life of 
God in all the ways of man ; who shall reverse the 
sacrilege of the Jewish hucksters, and make even 
the house of merchandise our Father's house. 

Our age has, also, strong sceptical tendencies, — 
due, I believe, not, as it is often alleged, to its 
science, but to its materialistic habit of thought 
and feeling, and thence imported into science, 



HEBREW. GREEK, AND LATIN. 



155 



whose true spirit is that of reverential awe before 
the realm of the yet unknown, which only grows 
as knowledge grows, and expands as the area 
covered by man's research enlarges. There is 
nothing in the ascertained truths of science which 
militates against the Christianity of Christ and his 
Gospel ; nor yet, as seems to me, is there necessarily 
an anti-Christian element in prevailing theories 
that have not grown, and perhaps may never grow, 
into science ; though, if there were, these theories 
would have no validity against a religion which 
has its double witness in impregnable historical 
testimony, and in the undeniable consciousness 
and experience of a multitude of believing souls 
that no man can number. Yet there is scepticism 
in the air. There are vague doubts afloat. There 
are new departments of inquiry and investigation 
that still lack and crave Christian baptism. There 
are fundamental questions at the basis of all belief 
and knowledge, with which the mind of the com- 
ing generation must wrestle. To such work 
Christian scholars alone are competent. The pulpit 
can no longer keep to the old paths. Respectable 
ignorance and the humdrum repetition of anti- 
quated formulas will do more toward unsettling 
than toward establishing faith. There are needed 
for the sacred office skilled and trained minds that 
shall add to their faith knowledge, — that shall see 
all round and through falsities and fallacies, — 
hospitable minds, too, that are not afraid to enter- 



156 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



tain strangers, and can recognize in them angels, if 
angels they be. 

But, if Christianity is to be defended, it cannot 
be solely or chiefly by professional champions. 
The work must be fully shared by educated minds 
in every sphere of life. The faith of the coming 
age is contingent on their attitude. The prestige 
of their belief alone can avert infidelity on the part 
of the many who cannot try the spirits for them- 
selves, but always lean on authority. Above all, 
Christianity will have its impregnable defence, its 
irrefutable argument, in the consecrated lives, the 
exalted Christian virtue, the beauty of holiness 
manifested by those whose extended culture gives 
them commanding influence, and makes them the 
creators of opinion, belief, and character in an ever- 
widening circle. 

My friends, if it be not a mere farce that you 
are enacting in these sacred valedictory rites ; if 
you mean them and feel them, as I know you do, 
— they have for you a mandate of imperative duty. 
For your own sakes, religion should be the rock- 
foundation on which the fair fabric of your honor- 
able and useful lives shall be built. Think not 
that the corner-stone can be inserted in later years, 
before the winds and rains beat upon the house. 
They will never beat more fiercely than in the next 
ensuing period of your lives, as you enter on your 
career, under God, artificers and arbiters of your 
own destiny ; and the house on the sand stands 



HEBREW, GREEK, AND LATIN. 157 



always at their mercy. Nor is your obligation to 
society less sacred than that to your own souls. 
Gifts to Christ and the Church of saints long since 
passed on to heaven have been lavished on your 
nurture here. You are heavily in debt to their 
prayers and offerings. You can be worthy of 
their benefactions only by giving your best service 
to the truth of God and the establishment of his 
reign among men. 

II. The Grecian element of culture next claims 
our regard, — second only to religion in its worth 
to the individual soul, the inseparable ally of re- 
ligion in the progress of the community and the 
race. The scholar should be a man of taste, of re- 
finement, of gentle nurture. There have been pro- 
digies of boorish erudition, of immense book-learn- 
ing, with no sesthetic training, out of gearing with 
society, rude in manners, coarse in speech, brutal 
in controversy, — men whose scholarship, indeed, 
has towered up into undue eminence because there 
was nothing else of them, as a hill may seem a 
mountain when it rises from an unbroken plain. 
Such men were Bentley and Porson ; and what 
have they left but their names ? Possibly the 
settlement or the more hopeless unsettling of some 
disputed text in an ancient author, or the resolu- 
tion of some supposed fact of Greek or Roman 
history into a myth ; while, so far as their personal 
influence could go, like guardian mastiffs, they 
warned off aspirants from the height on which 



158 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



they stood. Compare with such men Thomas 
Arnold, who had enough of mere learning to give 
him fame, yet was not celebrated for it, because he 
so won all who knew him by the grace and beauty, 
the fair humanities, incarnated in his mien, inter- 
course, and influence ; by the charm he gave to 
whatever he said and did and wrote ; by his genial 
spirit, with its outgoings in every form and way in 
which he could minister to human happiness and 
well-being. His spirit multiplied itself in all 
directions, and is still working in unnumbered 
minds and hearts, in men of the widest diversity 
of condition, — men whom his learning would not 
have made wiser, nor his talents impressed, nor his 
virtues attracted, but for the Hellenistic culture 
superadded to the Hebrew. 

Prime importance should be attached, under 
this head, to personal refinement, not in the super- 
ficial sense in which the word is currently misused, 
but to purity, delicacy, gentleness, and grace in 
thought and feeling, and thence in mien and man- 
ner. The scholar falls below his calling, if he 
fails to be a Christian gentleman ; and it is only by 
the traits that belong to this highest style of char- 
acter that his advanced intellectual culture can 
become an intenerating and elevating influence in 
the society around him. 

The scholar should also cultivate his aesthetic 
capacity by such conversance as he may have — if 
not by direct observation, by paintings, models, 



HEBREW, GREEK, AND LATIN. 159 



and engravings — with the fairest monuments of 
ancient and modern art. He should study pro- 
portion, symmetry, and harmony in form and 
color. He should know the beauty that dwells in 
simplicity. He should learn to abhor shams in 
architecture, ostentatious incongruities in orna- 
ment, the substitution of cost and glitter for fit- 
ness and grace, that he may bear his part in diffus- 
ing purer tastes and a more genuine love of the 
beautiful. I lay stress on this culture, not for its 
own sake alone, but on higher grounds. It was 
not without reason that Plato identified the true, 
the beautiful, and the good. Coarseness and taw- 
driness are demoralizing. Mean tastes and low 
pleasures are near kindred, and love to dwell in 
the same house. On the other hand, conversance 
with fair forms and just proportions indicates or 
creates a style of character congenial with all that 
in soul, speech, and life, is lovely and of good re- 
port. 

Nearly akin to art-culture are simplicity, ease, 
and grace in written style. The art of expression 
is too little studied among us. We who write are 
too prone to content ourselves with words that will 
embody and convey our meaning. We forget 
that there is a double passage to be forced by 
what we write, beyond the reader's outer mind, his 
mere apprehensive faculties, to the inmost shrine 
of reflection, imagination, conviction, feeling, sym- 
pathy. What is rudely, though clearly written 



160 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



makes its way only through the outer wall, knocks 
in vain at the inner, proves without convincing, 
appeals without striking any answering chord, be- 
sieges the soul without breaching or mining it. 
The thoughts that breathe demand words that 
burn. The sword of truth that pierces to the mar- 
row is not a bowie-knife, but a Damascene blade. 

The best culture for style is to be obtained by 
familiarity with the classic models. Were it only 
for our English, we should maintain our familiarity 
with the ancient tongues. The versatile grace of 
the Greek, the directness and force of the Latin, 
are efficiently welded in our own language, which 
in its Norman elements has an exhaustless wealth 
of beauty, and, in its incisive Anglo-Saxon forms, 
a vigor, precision, and point unequalled among the 
other modern tongues. 

Be ambitious to write, not much, but well, — 
and much only if it can be written well. Put the 
best that is in you into whatever you utter or 
print ; and you will most efficiently serve, not 
only your own reputation, but — what is of much 
greater importance — whatever cause you advo- 
cate, whatever truth you expound, whatever aim 
you pursue. Study the art which in its simpli- 
city at once conceals and reveals the labor it costs, 
the elegant diction which adorns whatever it 
clothes, the mellifluous flow of words which hides 
strength in its sweetness, convinces by persuading, 
storms by sapping, conquers without show of arms. 



HEBREW, GREEK, AND LATIN. 



161 



III. The Latin element, the Roman culture, is 
pre-eminently that of law, order, citizenship, pa- 
triotism. Its essence is best comprehended in 
that one word loyalty, which denotes not, as it is 
often employed to mean, subservience to rulers, 
but submission to impersonal law, — and, if in any 
sense to men, to them only as the representatives 
and trustees of law. What we need in our coun- 
try more than all else is reverence for law as 
divine and absolute. In a republic we bear a 
double part, as sovereigns and subjects, as ordain- 
ing law and amenable to it, as the sources of the 
power to which we owe profound submission and 
unreserved obedience, — obedience, except in the 
rare case of an actual conflict with conscience, and 
then the acceptance of the penalty attached to 
disobedience. 

It is in the separation of these functions that 
lies our chief danger, our besetting sin. There is 
no tyranny so severe and so galling as republican 
tyranny, when those who make and execute the 
laws assume independence of their fellow-citizens ; 
for because the despotism is impersonal, many- 
• headed, and vague, the governed know not 
where or how to direct their protest and resist- 
ance, — because it is changeable and may be re- 
formed by change, the governed wait and hope. 
For the last fourteen years or more, there have 
been multiplied in the administration of our rev- 
enue laws the grossest enormities of extortion and 



162 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



oppression, such as would not have been dared or 
endured under any (so-called) absolute govern- 
ment in the civilized world, but which have here 
been borne and smothered till the darkness would 
no longer hide them. At the present moment, 
there is no other government this side of Turkey 
that would venture to rule so exclusively for its 
own interest, and with such supreme indifference 
to the claims and needs of its subjects, as this 
very government under which we live ; nor is 
there any other government under which the rulers 
can command so complete immunity from the laws 
which they make and administer. 

One chief reason for this state of things is that 
our scholars, our educated men, those who ought 
to lead opinion and give tone to sentiment, except 
when they have themselves aspired to official 
stations, have gradually withdrawn from their 
political trust and duty. While our educated men 
have multiplied faster than our population, and 
the standard of education has been continually 
rising, the average culture of our legislators is 
much lower than it was a generation ago. While 
in our colleges there is no small amount of instruc- 
tion in finance and public economy, the first 
rudiments, the very axioms of financial science, 
are, for the most part, unknown by our officials 
and law-makers. The greater part of our men of 
high culture not only shun all public charges, but 
hardly concern themselves with the candidates to 



HEBREW, GREEK, AND LATIN. 163 



be presented for their suffrage, and furnish a 
larger contribution to the list of non-voters than 
all other classes together. 

Scholars, let not this reproach rest on you. So 
far as you have leading minds, you are preordained 
to rule in the republic, if not by office, at least by 
suffrage and by influence. You have no right to 
evade this trust. The exercise of the functions of 
a citizen, openly, constantly, conscientiously, is a 
duty to which you are born, and from which only 
exile or death can discharge you. Office, indeed, 
you are not bound to seek ; and in our time it is 
only they who seek that find. But if men of large 
intelligence, broad culture, and honest hearts, 
would only be as truly loyal citizens as they are 
foremost men, there would be some hope of the 
return of those good old days, when, like Cincin- 
natus from the plough, men were forced into office 
because their country needed them, and filled the 
highest trusts as literally posts of service. 

But the Christian scholar, the man of cultured 
and forceful intellect, the patriotic citizen, will be 
true to his obligations as a subject no less than as 
a ruler", -not overriding law in the delusive chase 
after justice, not converting his right into wrong 
by his wayward autonomy in pursuing it, not seek- 
ing to reform evils and abuses by desecrating the 
sole legitimate fountain of reform and renovation, 
not vitiating worthy ends by abnormal and harm- 
ful means. The more he feels the dignity which 



164 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



compasses him as a king in a nation of kings, the 
more true and firm will be his allegiance to the 
sovereignty which he shares, the more constant 
his obedience to the rightful authority in which he 
I bears part. 

I have termed this Roman culture, and with 
good reason. Until the declining days of the re- 
public, so long as Rome retained her integrity free 
from foreign admixture, there is nothing more 
admirable than the position of the Roman citizen 
toward the state, — answering every call to her 
service, whether in war or in peace, to a subaltern 
place or to supreme command, — if in an exalted 
position, yet obeying with punctilious exactness 
the laws which he was bound to execute, returning 
to private life poorer than he left it, and resuming 
the charge and duty of an ordinary citizen as if 
the fasces had never been borne before him. 
Scholars, familiar as you are with these models, 
you can do your country no better service than to 
reproduce them. In this steadfast loyalty was the 
invincible power of the Roman Republic. Its 
might was in its law-abiding spirit. By this it 
grew ; by this it overcame ; by this it culminated. 
When this declined, the pillars of its strength 
shook in their sockets. When this decayed, Rome 
became a mere glorious name in history. 

Hebrew, Greek, Latin, — holiness, beauty, 
strength, — the triad unified in Him whose king- 
ship they inscribed over his cross. Scholars, make 



HEBREW, GREEK, AND LATIN. 



165 



them one in your aim and endeavor. They belong 
together in your culture ; see that they be blended 
in your character and your life-work. Hellenize 
your religion by the grace and beauty which alone 
can give it a shrine worthy of itself. Hebraize 
art, taste, and literature by that ineffaceable corban 
which shall consecrate all that you have and are to 
the praise of God and the good of man. Roman- 
ize piety, genius, learning, eloquence, aesthetic 
culture, by loyalty to your country, your con- 
science, and your God. Thus, as in Hebrew, 
Greek and Latin was written the inscription of 
mock-royalty over the cross, — over your lives, as 
the title of Him whose sole sovereignty you own, 
shall be written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin the 
name which the seer of Patmos saw on the 
Saviour's vesture, king of kings, and loud of 

LORDS. 



XII. 



OUR COUNTRY'S PERILS, NEEDS, AND 
CLAIMS. 

(1875). 

" Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children." — Psalm xlv. 16. 

The centennial celebrations of epochs in the con- 
flict through which our country struggled into 
being have recalled my attention to the history of 
those times and the lives of the principal actors ; 
and I am strongly impressed with the prominent 
part then borne in public affairs by graduates of 
Harvard College. The earliest resistance to op- 
pressive laws and arbitrary officials was, as you 
know, in Massachusetts ; and there is not an im- 
portant patriotic measure or movement on record 
in which our University is not represented. Some 
of those who were conspicuous in the opening 
scenes, as Joseph Warren and Josiah Quincy, were 
still young men, having passed directly from col- 
lege into the arena of verbal strife, on which the great 
drama was rehearsed before the first gun was fired. 
Of others, their seniors, like Samuel and John 
Adams, we find abundant evidence that they were 
in their earliest manhood known for advanced opin- 
ions in the direction of liberty, and for weight and 



OUR COUNTRY'S PERILS, NEEDS, AND CLAIMS.167 

power of character and influence. At the same 
time the clergy of the province, who were almost 
all educated here, were, with few exceptions, leaders 
in the cause of the people, and that with a discre- 
tion fully equal to their zeal, and with a courage 
and self-devotion which quickened more languid, 
energized colder, and sustained fainter hearts in 
their congregations. Felix prole virum, " Happy 
in her progeny of men worthy of the name," would 
have been the appropriate motto for our University 
in the last century. 

There are some reasons why the manhood of the 
graduates of that day seems precocious by the 
standard of our time. There were then few amuse- 
ments, little news, no collateral interests, tastes, or 
pursuits ; and the college studies of that period, re- 
stricted though they were in compass and deficient 
in accuracy, yet were stimulating, and supplied 
highly concentrated food for thought and feeling. 
There was a decided predilection for classical read- 
ing, not to say study (which would be a misnomer) ; 
and there was an easy, uncritical faith in the free- 
dom, civic virtue, and untarnished fame of the an- 
cient republics, which made their literature a per- 
petual source of inspiration to the ardent youth of 
the republic yet to be born. And there was a 
much more potent influence at work. There is no 
such ripener of mind and character as impending 
emergency, impatience of the present, and earnest 
aspiration for a better future. 



168 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



Have we not had experience of this power in 
our recent history ? When the news of Fort Sum- 
ter flashed through the land, there were in these 
halls those who seemed to their teachers mere boys, 
who started at once into vigorous manhood, grew 
by gradations more rapid than we could trace into 
high places of command, sought posts of the most 
perilous service, won evergreen laurels, — many, 
alas ! only to deck their graves, — while those who 
survived achieved for themselves a culture for 
which twice the term of peaceful civic life would 
have been inadequate. We had one with us at our 
last Commencement, the mere mutilated trunk of a 
man, whose after-dinner speech, with the fervor 
and fire of youth, which his maimed and suffering 
life had not chilled or dimmed, had a depth of pre- 
scient wisdom which would have found fit utter- 
ance from the lips of the elders in the gravest 
councils of the nation. Indeed, in none of her 
sons can our University take -a more honest pride 
than in those who gained in war the virtues and 
endowments that can best adorn and fructify the 
era of restored peace and renewed prosperity. 

If we could only view them aright, there are 
now for our republic emergencies, perils intense 
though insidious, a present to be spurned, a future 
to be striven for, which ought to awaken the patri- 
otic feeling of our young men, and to urge them on 
to early maturity for efficient public service. I 
avail myself of the present as a fit opportunity to 



OUR COUNTRY'S PERILS, NEEDS, AND CLAIMS. 169 



speak of the claims of our country on her educated 
men. Our imminent dangers are from popular igno- 
rance, financial folly, political curruption, and re- 
ligious latitudinarianism and indifference. If I can 
only arouse in those of whom we to-day take leave 
a sense of the responsibility which rests upon them 
as to these sources of evil, I am sure that I shall 
not have spoken in vain as regards the public and 
even the national well-being ; for, though a hundred 
and fifty right-minded youth seem of no account or 
weight among the millions of our people, there may 
be among them single minds and voices that shall 
make themselves felt and heard through the whole 
length and breadth of the land, as there were, a 
hundred years ago, individual young men fresh 
from our halls, but for whom certain most moment- 
ous passages of our history would have remained 
unwritten. 

1. I named popular ignorance among our chief 
dangers. Our unlimited freedom of suffrage — in 
theory plausible, if not fitting, and whether right 
or wrong, irreversible — is safe only with an intelli- 
gent people, and is fraught with peril if the voters 
know not what they do. The early settlements 
on every part of our soil, with hardly an exception, 
were made for causes that implied not inferior, 
but even superior intelligence on the part of the 
immigrants, who were drawn or driven hither, 
not by poverty and by the pressure of a population 
outgrowing the supply of its needs, but by politi- 



170 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



cal or religious dissent, persecution, or ambition. 
In their posterity, intelligence and the aptitude 
for it were a tradition and an inheritance, — not, as 
has sometimes been said, created and sustained by 
the common-school system, but originating, ener- 
gizing, and supplementing that system, which else 
would either have never come into being, or have 
died early of inanition. The posterity of those 
colonists is now nearly equalled, if not outnum- 
bered, by the descendants of exiles forced from 
their native homes by poverty, and of captives 
sold into slavery, who had no culture to transmit, 
and whose homes can have furnished only the 
most scanty educational inducements and helps. 
The common schools accomplished for the majority 
of their pupils, in an earlier generation, very 
much more than they can do now. They taught 
fewer things, indeed, but the few more thoroughly : 
not that schools or teachers were better, but they 
had more receptive pupils, — for the most part 
children from families where there was, if not 
extended knowledge, mental activity, — where, if 
there were not many books, there was at least the 
English Bible, which every child was trained, 
expected, nay, required to read, and which (to say 
nothing of its religious uses) expanded and deep- 
ened the thought of its readers, gave them a rich 
vocabulary to .think with, checked the growth of 
provincialisms and vulgarisms in diction, and 
imparted a higher, purer tone to common inter- 
course and daily life. 



OUR COUNTRY'S PERILS, NEEDS, AND CLAIMS. 171 

But the system, which seemed so efficient when 
buttressed and subsidized by home-influences, is 
inadequate to its assigned work for the children of 
the unprivileged, even here in New England, 
much more so in the southern and southwestern 
sections of the country ; yet it might be made 
adequate without any added expenditure of time 
or money. When, nearly forty years ago, the 
public schools were thought to have fallen behind 
the demands of the age, a reform-movement was 
started, and a new spirit was infused into the 
whole system, mainly through the labors of Horace 
Mann. That spirit has been so materialized and 
solidified into soulless formalisms, organisms, rou- 
tines, and repetitions, that, were he to reappear 
among us, he would recognize but little of what is 
still called his work. More red tape is now used 
in many single schools than would have sufficed 
for the whole State half a century ago. By a Me- 
zentian classification, the children that are capable 
of progress are kept at the snail's pace of their 
dull and immobile schoolmates, and the slowest of 
the flock mark time for all the rest. Meanwhile, 
public munificence wastes in costly structures, 
that are hardly built before some fresh prevailing 
fancy requires that they be remodelled, the funds 
which, expended in brain power, might perform 
efficient service. A large proportion of the pupils 
leave school without having even learned to read 
with sufficient ease for the art to be of any practi- 



172 BACCALAUREATE SEBMONS. 



cal benefit. They have, indeed, by dint of weari- 
some and useless reperusal memorized a few frag- 
ments of prose and verse, generally of second or 
third rate literary merit, but have not acquired 
the ability to read understanding^ a common 
newspaper paragraph. The fault lies not with the 
teachers, who perform their appointed routine- 
work with fidelity and zeal, many of them with 
amazing skill ; but the very best of them, under 
the requirements of a lifeless, obsolete, yet impera- 
tively exacting system, are cramped as David was 
when he put on Saul's armor to go into battle with 
the Philistine giant. 

Our schools, to do their work, must be emanci- 
pated from dead prescription and Procrustean 
methods and standards ; they must be officered 
throughout by teachers who are enamoured of 
their profession and who magnify their calling ; and 
those teachers must be left free to do the very 
best that is in them for children of all types and 
grades of capacity, disposition, and home-training. 
This is an interest which craves the attention and 
effort of our educated men, and especially of the 
young men of high culture, who are soon to fill 
foremost places of trust and influence in the com- 
munity, and to whom we are to look for reform 
and renovation. Many of you will occupy posi- 
tions in which you will be called to bear part in 
the charge and oversight of public education ; 
and there is no service that you can render which 



OUR COUNTRY'S PERILS, NEEDS, AND CLAIMS. 173 

will be more fruitful of benefit than the endeavor 
to make our schools the nurseries of citizens 
worthy of their trust, — the seats of a culture 
thorough in its rudiments, stimulating in its proc- 
esses, direct in its aims, definite in its results, and 
such as shall impart the desire and capacity for a- 
prolonged self-culture. If there be among you one 
who shall have the genius and ability so to demon- 
strate the defects of our present system, and so to 
point out the better way, that he can gain the pub- 
lic ear and act on the general mind, he can do no 
nobler work, and win no higher praise. 

2. Second on the list of our imminent perils I 
named financial folly. Whether it was necessary 
for us in the late war to set aside our fixed standard 
of value, is perhaps an open question, though to me 
it does not seem so. But to remain without such 
a standard, and to take no measures for its restor- 
ation, is at once foolish and atrociously criminal. 
It incapacitates us for knowing our actual condition, 
and the fact and rate of our progress or decline in 
national wealth ; it leads to individual extrava- 
gance, by exaggerating the nominal and reputed 
value of property and income; it encourages over- 
trading and rash adventure, by the frequent fluctu- 
ation of our irredeemable currency ; it adds to every 
extended commercial operation that element of 
pure hazard, which constitutes the difference be- 
tween legitimate speculation founded on calculating 
foresight, and gambling, which trusts to incalcu- 



174 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



lable chance ; it thus compels many of our mer- 
chants to be gamblers against their will, and viti- 
ates the moral natures of the rest with the foul 
passions that preside over the orgies of the roulette- 
table ; it generates the state of mind, and nour- 
ishes the habits of thought and life, which induce 
embezzlements, peculations, forgeries, and the 
whole dark brood of pecuniary crimes; and the 
fearful multiplication of these crimes within the 
last few years is chargeable much more to our 
financial condition than to all other demoralizing 
influences combined. I think myself authorized 
in saying this, by the admitted fact that more than 
half a century ago pecuniary crimes of all kinds 
grew with an appalling rapidity in Great Britain 
during a like condition of the currency, and be- 
came again infrequent when the metallic standard 
of value was restored. 

Our present financial regime is sustained in 
part by the preponderant influence of the debtor 
class, always far outnumbering the creditor class, 
and always ready to advocate the policy which 
will enable them to pay or compound their dues at 
the lowest rate. But it could not retain its hold, 
were it not for the lamentable ignorance of a 
large part of those who are intrusted with the 
management of our public affairs. We have been 
doomed, over and over again, to see the first prin- 
ciples of financial science not denied, not disputed, 
but quietly ignored by our political leaders. Men 



O UB CO TJNTR Y ' S PERILS, NEEDS, AND CLAIMS. 175 

have undertaken the management of our national 
treasury, who have shown no knowledge of even 
the existence of such a science as political econ- 
omy. Therefore is it that I name our financial 
interests as among the responsibilities of our edu- 
cated men. You, my friends, have learned better 
things. You have been made conversant in the 
lecture-room with the principles that have been so 
shamelessly violated in our public policy. Sooner 
than you think, you will fill places in which your 
opinions and influence will have an appreciable 
weight. Our present system, or abnegation of 
system, may continue long enough for you to take 
part in the inauguration of a sounder policy. If 
not so, subsequent crises may claim the preventive 
energy of those who can understand the true 
financial interests of the community. There is no 
part of your culture here that better deserves to 
be cherished, expanded, and utilized in your fu- 
ture life as citizens, as office-bearers, as men of 
standing and influence, than that which relates to 
the principles and laws that underlie commerce, 
trade, and currency. They have a bearing upon 
the moral well-being of the people fully equal to 
that which concerns their material prosperity. 
They demand for their conservation and their 
practical working the highest intelligence, no less 
than the integrity and patriotism of those who 
would do the good service which the country will 
demand of you, as you become what you are 



176 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



trained, and I trust, destined to be, leaders in 
opinion and action, — reformers, or rather re- 
builders in the fabric of the body politic. 

3. Political corruption is another of our domi- 
nant evils and imminent perils. Unscrupulous 
ambition, cupidity, and venality have attained a 
most portentous magnitude. Entire departments 
of our government seem to be administered with 
hardly an incidental reference to the service of 
the people, certainly with the prime intent to but- 
tress party, to reward adherents, and to appro- 
priate public funds for private emolument. The 
integrity of the suffrage is constantly assailed ; 
elections are secured by bribery ; offices are openly 
bought and sold ; and every political triumph is 
succeeded, or oftener preceded and effected, by a 
scramble for its spoils. Instead of a government 
by the people, we are threatened — if the threat be 
not already fulfilled — with an oligarchy of dema- 
gogues, from which a decent constitutional mon- 
archy would be a welcome relief and refuge. 

You are, all of you, as I suppose, already citi- 
zens ; and I would have you possessed of a pro- 
found sense of the sacredness of the trust and 
obligation incumbent on the citizen, the co-sover- 
eign, of a free people. It is a kingly office and 
function ; preserve it then in all its purity and 
dignity. Your every vote is an exertion of your 
moral agency for good or for evil. You assume 
responsibility for the man whom you help choose. 



0 UR CO UNTR Y ' S PERILS, NEEDS, AND CLAIMS. 177 

for the measure which you help carry. Your ac- 
countability is the same as if you yourself chose 
the man, or enacted the measure. Dare, then, to 
dissent where you cannot approve. It is because 
honest citizens forbear to let their protest be 
heard, or to register it by their ballots, that cor- 
rupt men gain the ascendency, and evil counsels 
prevail. There are among the less informed many 
who would gladly follow the intelligent leading of 
upright and public-spirited citizens. Follow they 
will at all events, and they ought never to lack 
leaders worthy of their confidence. 

As regards public office, many cultivated and 
high-minded men greatly err by refusing it, when 
they might obtain it without unworthy concessions, 
and hold it for the welfare of the community. I 
would have you prospectively look upon public 
charges as positions, not of emolument or ambition, 
but of service, to be rendered, if need be, with the 
sacrifice of personal aims for the general good. I 
would have you, in the future, shrink from no 
trust which you are adequate to discharge, and 
assume none which you cannot consciously occupy 
as a post of duty. The country, whose protection 
you share, whose honor or shame is yours, whose 
glory should be your ambition, whose prosperity 
you should regard as identical with your own, has 
indefeasible claims on your conscientious fidelity, 
whether in a private or a public station, whether 
in the wary and judicious exercise of the right of 



178 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



suffrage, in your voice and influence in behalf of 
the true and the good, or in your performance of 
whatever functions of whatever grade may be de- 
volved upon you. It was said not long ago of one 
of our best and foremost men, that he would not 
lift his finger to evade the meanest or to win the 
highest office in the nation's gift; and that, in 
either, his only question would be, not how the 
place ranked or what revenue it yielded, but how 
much of sincere and thorough work he could put 
into it. Such a man is the true citizen of a repub- 
lic ; such were the men whose names have been pre- 
served for us from the earliest time in unfading 
honor ; such are the men whom our seminaries of 
liberal culture should train for the service of the 
state. 

Loyalty is a term which has been too exclu- 
sively employed in connection with kingship, and 
in our history loyalist and royalist have been gen- 
erally treated as synonymes. They are very far 
from being synonymes. There is a heaven-wide 
difference between devotion to a sovereign who 
may be a usurper or a tyrant, and firm allegiance 
to impersonal, or rather multi-personal, sacred, 
venerable, eternal law. The true loyalists of our 
Revolutionary epoch were the men who armed 
themselves against the oppression, which was gall- 
ing mainly because it was in defiance of funda- 
mental law and constitutional right. Such loyalty 
is now our nation's need, in antagonism to mal-ad- 



OUR COUNTRY *S PERILS, NEEDS, AND CLAIMS. 179 



ministration and usurpation, to the abuse of trust 
and the invasion of right, to bribery, corruption, 
and favoritism. As loyal citizens of the republic, 
you can have no better models, no more worthy 
examples, than those who a century ago did honor 
to their nurture here by services and sacrifices 
that won for them imperishable renown. Be it 
your care that equally honored names shall appear 
on your list in the Catalogue, a century hence. 

4. I should suppress my most profound convic- 
tion, did I not number religious latitudinarianism 
and indifference among the imminent perils of our 
time. A century ago, there was free-thinking, 
loose thinking, infidelity in our land; and there 
are well known names of that period, which have 
been transmitted with the very reverse of the odor 
of sancity. The undoubted services of Thomas 
Paine, and the merited popularity and efficiency 
of his political writings, hold a prominent place in 
our history ; though his scurrilous and profane 
assaults on Christianity, did not appear till several 
years after the close of the war, his opinions were 
proclaimed much earlier, and were shared by some 
of the foremost men in our Revolutionary crisis ; 
and iconoclastic, destructive work, though in the 
cause of truth and righteousness, nay, of religion 
and piety, always enlists among its zealous coadju- 
tors those who are mere destructives and nihilists. 
On the other hand, there is at the present moment 
among religious people a higher type of piety, a 



180 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

more intelligent, and therefore a more steadfast 
faith, a more energetic propagandism, than existed 
a hundred years ago ; and if men would only own 
the kindred of spirit which remains intact in and 
through wide divergencies of creed and form, it 
would be seen that there never was a stronger 
array than now of those who are ready, without 
compromise, doubt, or qualification, to take their 
stand in life and death, and to identify themselves 
for time and eternity, with Christ and his Gospel. 

But, a century ago, the vast majority of families 
and of men and women in our land, especially in 
New England, believed in the Christian revelation 
as of divine origin and authority, accepted its 
moral laws as of binding validity, and conscien- 
tiously did and refrained from doing many things 
solely from a sense of religious restraint and 
obligation. There was, indeed, a transition-period, 
when human law and authority were feeble, doubt- 
ful, and vacillating, during which our people were 
saved from anarchy mainly by a surviving, though 
declining, loyalty to the rigid theocratic discipline 
of their founders and fathers. This has all passed 
away. The sense of spiritual and divine realities 
has ceased to pervade the mass of our people, and 
seems utterly wanting in the greater number of 
those by whom it is not distinctly and emphatically 
recognized. In many circles, indifference to all 
religious subjects and interests is regarded as the 
normal state ; and utter unbelief, nay, blank 



OUR COUNTRY'S PERILS, NEEDS, AND CLAIMS. 181 



atheism, or some euphemistic alias for it, is not 
considered even as regrettable, or as impairing the 
soundness of one's judgment or the safety of his in- 
fluence. Much of our current literature deals 
irreverently and flippantly with the objects of 
Christian faith ; and not a little of our popular 
poetry is utterly heathenish. Religion as a life- 
power — never stronger than now in individual 
hearts — is no longer, as formerly, a shaping and 
controlling force in society and government. But 
no government has yet lived, no society has yet 
prospered, without it. Nowhere in human history 
has the experiment been thoroughly and persist- 
ently tried but in France ; and she, after her 
baptism in the bloodbath of infidelity, was only too 
happy to rebuild her shattered altars, to recall her 
banished priesthood, and to adopt the Church as 
an ally of the State. 

Above all, in a free country, where no man or 
body of men can claim superior reverence, where 
in its human aspects law has no higher source or 
sanction than the mind and will of the people, is 
there intense need that there be a public and 
general recognition of its source beside the throne 
of God, and its sanction in his eternal justice and 
retributive providence. He who fears not God 
will cease to regard man ; and wanton, law-despis- 
ing autonomy is the natural and inevitable out- 
growth and expression of religious unbelief. 

While an ambiguous, undefined position as to 



182 



BA CCA LA UREA TE SERMONS. 



religion, an indifference tantamount to denial, can 
be at the present moment affirmed of large numbers 
of persons of (so-called) liberal culture, it is a 
position unworthy of them, even pre-eminently. 
For absolute unbelief, if it be reached by inquiry 
and reasoning, I blame no one. But I do regard 
him as intensely blameworthy, who of his own 
choice remains indifferent and undecided, — who 
treats the whole subject as one of those inferior in- 
terests from which it is the part of a wise man to 
keep aloof. Be it true or false, religion, Christ- 
ianity, has a paramount claim above all things else 
on inquiry, decision, and corresponding action. 
It is either God's best gift, or man's most sorry and 
despicable delusion ; and he who cannot be for it 
ought to be with his whole heart and soul against it. 

I fear not for you, my friends, any results from 
the faithful study of Christianity, its records, proofs, 
and claims. But I do deprecate your indifference 
to it, in part because the community needs the 
strength which such as you can give to the cause 
of Christian truth, yet still more, for your own 
sakes. You are to build for yourselves character, 
reputation, influence ; and I know that Christian 
faith and piety are the only foundation on which 
you can build with assured safety. Structures out- 
wardly as fair and as strong as any of you can hope 
to rear have, in the sight of those who have gone 
before you, been swept away by the onrush of 
sudden temptation, or have collapsed because the 



OUR COUNTRY'S PERILS, NEEDS, AND CLAIMS. 183 

sand on which they stood has been washed from 
under them. The time will come when, if you 
build on any other foundation than the living, 
eternal Rock, you will know and own that it was 
the one fatal and irretrievable mistake and calamity 
of your life. You are capable of determining for 
yourselves whether I speak the truth. To know 
whether it is the truth, is of so unutterable moment 
to you that no subject ought to lie closer in your 
regard. Not one of you ought to go forth into 
active life indifferent to religion. Not one of you 
should fail to be either an earnest friend, advocate, 
exemplar of Christianity, or its avowed and open 
enemy. Were you to go hence determined, each 
of you, to choose his position with conscientious 
wariness, and then to take his stand frankly, 
honestly, manfully, I feel persuaded that there 
would be among you but one heart and voice, one 
aim and purpose, — that of loyal devotion and life- 
long service to God in Christ. 

My friends, though I may seem from year to 
} r ear to repeat the same formulary of greetings and 
good wishes, I can assure you that the old words 
come to my lips with an always new and ever pro- 
founder feeling. Years only strengthen the affec- 
tions and deepen the sympathies ; and every new 
wave of the life-tide that flows from our inlet into 
the great sea carries with it more and more of my 
loving remembrance, dear appreciation, and fond 



184 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



hope. I wish that those who go from us knew how 
much joy they give here by their sucecss and honor. 
Believe me, my friends, that nothing that concerns 
you can be indifferent to us ; and take with you 
from each and all of your teachers a hearty god- 
speed on your several careers. May our Father's 
loving Providence and guiding Spirit be ever over 
you and with you. May your powers and attain- 
ments be so consecrated to the service of your age, 
your country, and your God, that the approval of 
good men and the blessing of Heaven may be with 
you through your earthly pilgrimage, and that by 
your fidelity here you may be trained for the higher 
trusts and nobler stewardships of the life eternal. 



XIII. 



THOUGHT, FEELING, AND ACTION. 

(1816.) 

" While I was musing, the fire burned; then spake I with my 
tongue." — Psalms xxxix. 3. 

First, thought (" while I was musing ") ; then 
feeling ("the fire burned"); then speech or 
action (" then spake I with my tongue "), — such is 
undoubtedly, in the last analysis, the natural and 
necessary order. Action (and speech is action) 
implies antecedent feeling ; and feeling implies 
antecedent thought. But the habit of our time 
is to reverse this process, as nearly as the nature 
of the mind will permit ; so that, in unnumbered 
instances, we have, first, speech or action from 
sudden impulse, then the feeling which it either 
engenders or intensifies, and, last, if at all, re- 
flection. The consequence of this reversed order 
is, that sayings and doings, at their very best, 
have much less in them, mean less, carry less 
weight, exert less influence, than they ought. 
They may, indeed, fill a larger space, — words cer- 
tainly do : it always takes a longer time to give a 
shallow, hazy exposition of a subject than to do it 



186 



BA CCA LA UREA TE SERMONS. 



justice ; and the length of a speech often bears an 
inverse proportion to its solid contents. 

It has seemed to me that I could render no bet- 
ter service to you, my friends, who are leaving us 
for new departments of active duty, or of study 
with an ultimate view to your life-work, than to 
illustrate the prime importance of deliberate 
thought and profound feeling as the sole basis for 
worth and efficiency in word and deed. 

I cannot but think, as I have intimated, that 
our time is characterized by the crowding-out of 
thought ; and this, in great part, by the vast in- 
crease of the food for thought, — in part, also, by 
the multiplication of occasions and opportunities 
for speech and action. The avenues to the soul 
are so thronged as to leave it no privacy. Ne- 
hemiah, by far the most able, resolute, and efficient 
personage in the Hebrew annals, gives us the 
secret of his power when he writes, " Then I con- 
sulted with myself." Self is, with many, the last 
counsellor resorted to. Is any course of action to 
be determined upon ? They have recourse to an 
outside conscience. They go into the street, or 
into the public assembly, and cry, " Men and 
brethren, what shall I do ? " instead of communing 
with their own souls ; which, if there be a love of 
the true and the right, is the same thing as com- 
muning with the ever and most intimately present 
God. 

We see tokens of this superficiality in every de- 



THOUGHT, FEELING, AND ACTION. 187 



partment of life. In science, it shows itself in 
sweeping generalizations, which ignore the larger 
part of the facts they ought to embrace ; in litera- 
ture, in audacious and glittering rhetoric, adapted, 
not to convey thought, but to cover up the lack of 
thought ; in poetry, in images which have not 
time to shape themselves before they are put into 
numbers, present only shadowy and indefinite out- 
lines of the grand and the beautiful, and are often 
most prized for an obscurity which baffles the 
reader's understanding, and gives the writer credit 
for depth where there is only muddiness. In 
political action, how few are willing to assume the 
labor requisite to understand the momentous in- 
terests in which they display the most pertinacious 
partisanship ! In private life, a very large part of 
the errors and crimes committed by men in posi- 
tions of trust — the betrayals of confidence, the 
frauds, peculations, embezzlements, which occur 
with such alarming frequency — are due, not to 
any initial purpose of wrong, but to the absence 
of that wariness, that circumspection, which in 
earlier times was the safeguard and nurse of prin- 
ciple and character. 

The subject before us appertains to the philoso- 
phy of moral action ; and I will ask you to ex- 
amine with me the genesis of word and deed. 
Our wills are free,if we can give credence to our own 
consciences, which certainly treat us as if we could 
in every instance have done otherwise ; approving 



188 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



or blaming us, instead of congratulating or pitying 
us, as they would if we were acted upon by irre- 
sistible forces from without. Yet are we really 
free ? How numerous are our utterances and acts, 
which at the moment could not have been other- 
wise ! How often are we compelled to speak and 
act, when it is literally true, as we say, that we 
have no time to think! I have been engaged, I 
will suppose, in an exciting conversation. The 
subject was not of my own choice ; and my words 
were suggested, shaped, virtually forced from me, 
by the words of others. Being the man I am, I 
could not have spoken differently. What I said 
was the true expression of my conviction and feel- 
ing. From the abundance of the heart the mouth 
spake. Yet, as I review the conversation, I have 
not the consciousness of an automaton. If I have 
spoken soberly and kindly, I approve myself; if 
with levity or severity, I blame myself. Yes, I 
literally approve or blame myself, — not my words, 
which could not have been other than they were, 
but the self, which, I am- well aware, might have 
been, by my own voluntary agency, a worse self 
or a better self ; and thus might have spoken on 
that occasion more frivolously or harshly, more 
seriously or mercifully. So, too, I may have just 
performed an act, right or wrong, beneficent or 
cruel, self-restraining or self-indulgent. The oc- 
casion, the opportunity, came upon me unawares. 
I had no time to deliberate. I could not but act 



THOUGHT, FEELING, AND ACTION. 189 

myself on the impulse of the moment. It was out 
of my power at that instant to act otherwise than 
in accordance with my tone of feeling and cast of 
character. Yet, when I reflect upon it, I know 
that I was worthy of approval or censure, — I, not 
the act, but the self, that might have been, in some 
way, through the exercise of my own free will, a 
very different self. 

But what can I do for myself? I may, if I 
choose, do nothing. Conscious of the power of free- 
dom, I may decline to use that power, and may 
thus abdicate my freedom. I may so abandon my- 
self wholly to outside influences, that the associa- 
tions and inducements of various kinds that befall, 
surround, beset me, are not only the occasions, but 
the shaping causes, of my speech and action. Am 
I, then, free ? Is my soul my own, or have I lost 
it? The question answers itself. I am not in any 
sense free. Yet I know that I might have been 
free, and that I chose rather not to be so. As, un- 
der certain ancient codes, a man born free could 
sell himself into perpetual slavery, so may one, by 
his own willing self-surrender, make himself a life- 
long slave to outside influences. 

Where, then, lies our freedom, or the possibility 
of it ? It lies in our power of attention, in our 
command of thought, in the control which we can 
establish over the realm within, whence inevitably 
flow our words and deeds. The whole philosophy 
of moral action is comprised in those familiar 



190 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



words, " Keep thy heart with all diligence ; for out 
of it are the issues of life." It is when we seem 
the least active, that we are in truth the most 
active. It is when we say and do nothing, that we 
determine what we shall say or do. It is in our 
retired and quiet hours, that we are the most busy 
for good or for evil. It is then that the spirits 
come and go at our bidding. Those that we then 
make welcome stay with us when we lose the clear 
consciousness of their presence, and prompt us with- 
out our knowing whence the impulse comes. Those 
that we then exclude keep aloof from us, and bear 
no part in the ordering of our lives. 

You, my friend, I will suppose, are accustomed 
to meditate on your being and your destiny, on your 
relations to God and man, on the vast responsibility 
of life, on its opportunities for improvement and 
usefulness, on the momentous and eternal interests 
depending upon it. Your days neither rise nor close 
without the appeal to the Divine guidance, the self- 
commitment to the Divine benediction. It is thus 
that you have willed to live. You are fully aware 
that you might have lived far otherwise. You 
have often put forth strong effort to exclude 
thoughts of a lower, perhaps of an opposite, type ; 
to recall wandering thoughts ; to keep your mind 
intent on great, high, sacred themes. The process has 
been precisely that described in our text : " While 
I was musing the fire burned." Patient thought 
has generated profound feeling. Your emotional 



THOUGHT, FEELING, AND ACTION. 191 



life has taken its character and tone from the be- 
liefs, convictions, principles, which have been pon- 
dered and revolved in your meditative hours. Thus 
far, and no farther, does your freedom extend ; but, 
in extending thus far, it covers the whole field of 
your active life, and embraces all that you say or 
do. You are in society, and immersed in the cur- 
rent of rapid conversation. The subject may not 
be of your own choice ; but your words are not de- 
termined by the complexion of the current. They 
take the coloring of your beliefs and principles, de- 
sires and affections. They flow with the current, 
if it be true, reverent, kind ; the} r cross and stem 
it, if it be false, undevout, malevolent. An occa- 
sion comes on which you must either act, or — what 
is, as regards the will, equally an act — refuse to do 
what the occasion prompts. If it be an opportunity 
for a right or beneficent act, you spontaneously 
avail yourself of it ; if it be a temptation to any 
form of wrong or evil, you as spontaneously spurn 
it. 

But your retired and quiet hours may be pass- 
ed very differently. You ma} 7 give free scope to 
harmful reveries, to imaginings that transgress the 
borders of purity and integrity, to longings incon- 
sistent with faithful service in your sphere of duty. 
You may take a coarse pleasure in welcoming 
thoughts which you imagine you can never be 
sufficiently depraved to actualize. These reveries 
give birth to desires and affections of their own 



192 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



type ; these musings light and fan a fire of their own 
baleful hue ; and by your inward life thus ordered 
your social and active life is determined. You are 
constantly saying and doing things which you do 
not approve, which you did not intend beforehand, 
did not deliberately choose or plan. You excuse 
yourself to others, perhaps even to your own soul, 
on the ground of suddenness and inadvertency. 
You say with sincerity, and with some degree of 
truth, " Had I only had time to reflect, I would have 
spoken or acted otherwise." But in nine cases 
out of ten you cannot have time to reflect. You 
must speak or act at the moment, or not at all ; 
and it is these inadvertent words and deeds that are 
the true index of the character, of the selfhood. In 
them you are yielding to a necessity of your own 
choice, — to a necessity which is the offspring of 
your own freedom. We have the record of some 
of St. Paul's inadvertent words; and they were 
those of burning zeal for human salvation. We 
have some traditions of St. John's inadvertent acts, 
when he was an old man at Ephesus ; and they were 
spontaneous ministries of love for his Master's flock. 
We have known persons who have been frequently 
surprised into acts of signal beneficence ; others, 
from whom occasions that might have seemed 
adapted to give offence aud excite anger have only 
elicited unpremeditated utterances of forbearance, 
forgiveness, charity. The fearless knight who sleeps 
in his armor is awakened by a midnight alarm, not 



THOUGHT, FEELING, AND ACTION. 193 



to dastardly surrender, but to brave resistance. 
The true soldier in the great battle of life sleeps 
only in his armor ; and the sudden call is a sum- 
mons, not to yield passively to the powers of evil, 
but to come off from the conflict more than con- 
queror. 

If these things be so, they attach prime impor- 
tance to those portions of our lives which with 
many of us are accounted of the least importance. 
They make preparation for duty the essential ele- 
ment of duty. This is taught us by that sacred 
example to which we can never look without pro- 
fit. Our Saviour's active ministry occupied but a 
very small portion of his life. What mean those 
silent years in Nazareth ? What mean those forty 
days in the wilderness, at the outset of his Mes- 
sianic career? What mean those lone nights of 
prayer on the mountain ? What, but preparation 
adequate to the world-wide and world-enduring 
mission that lay before him ? 

For us, the quality of our lives must depend 
on the mass of soul, on the quantity of character ; 
and this must grow,not from what we say and do,but 
from what we think and feel. This truth is strik- 
ingly expressed by Cicero, who writes : " A strong 
and great mind consists in two things. One is a 
superiority to circumstances, in the conviction 
that a man ought neither to admire, choose, nor 
seek aught that is not right and becoming; and 
should succumb neither to example, nor to mental 



194 BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



perturbation, nor to fortune. The other is, that, 
with a mind thus prepared, he should undertake 
the conduct of great, especially of useful, affairs, not 
shrinking from arduous labor or from peril. The 
glory lies in the latter, as does the usefulness also ; 
but the reason, the efficient cause, is in the 
former." 

So far as we have the lives of the most useful 
men made known to us, they have corresponded 
with this description of the great moralist. These 
men have had a secret, inward life of their own, 
nourished by contemplation and prayer, fed by the 
dews of heavenly grace. They have subdued and 
trained their own spirits, before they have ob- 
tained power over their fellow-men. Their active 
lives have been but the counterpart of the hidden 
life with God. Indeed, some of these great lives 
have been as remarkable for the length and fre- 
quency of their breathing-spells — seasons without 
any outside work — as for the intense and cogent 
energy of their more active portions. Hardly any 
man of his age did so much, in so many ways, and 
so well, as Dr. Chalmers ; yet his biography is full 
of vacations, — times, evidently, when he was re- 
cruiting brain-power and soul-power ; drawing in 
fresh vigor from communion with God, to start 
anew with an energy born not of flesh or of the 
will of man, but of the might of the Divine Spirit. 

We need to be constantly reminded that the 
efficiency of our life-work depends not on its quan- 



THOUGHT, FEELING, AND ACTION. 195 



tity, but on its quality. If we are shallow and 
superficial in thought and feeling, no matter how 
abundant we are in activity, we but labor in vain, 
and spend our strength for nought. The river, 
whose unresting flow is an industrial force for a 
score of thriving towns and cities on its margin, is 
sustained in its speed and power by snows and 
rains that fall on mountains hardly accessible to 
the foot of man ; and, let these fail, the mill-wheel 
rests, the shuttles and spindles lie still, and want 
replaces industry in the streets. Equally man's 
most fruitful industry of mind and soul flows 
from unseen sources in the delectable mountains 
of holy musing, rapt devotion, praise, love, and 
charity ; and, if these languish and dry up, the 
soul-work becomes mere vapid hand-work or 
tongue-work, and this soon lapses into lassitude 
and indifference. 

Now, the tendency of our time is to merge pre- 
paration in action. We must hear and read and 
learn and do so much, that we have no time to think 
or feel. The telegraph keeps us conversant with 
the daily events, rumors, speculations, of the whole 
civilized" world. Competition demands constant 
alertness and effort. Our place in life can be main- 
tained only by incessant labor. We are driven in 
all our work. Hence the lack of depth, thorough- 
ness, completeness, in literature, in philosophy, in 
statecraft, in handicraft, and, above all, in the dis- 
charge of our daily duty. The one prime need is 



196 BACCALA UBEA TE SERMONS. 



preparation for our work, whatever it be. If it be 
intellectual labor, let careful and profound thought 
— our own and not another's thought, or, if an- 
other's, made ours by assimilation and reproduc- 
tion — precede and accompany whatever we under- 
take. If it be the labor of a profession, let us be 
not mere routine-workers, but master-workmen, 
conversant with the scope, meaning, and bearing 
of whatever we do ; and with an inward life not 
merged in the outward, but above it, embracing it 
while independent of it. If we essay to serve the 
State, by word or pen, in place or office, let us 
beware how we handle affairs that we do not compre- 
hend ; and deem silence and neutrality the only 
honorable, the only honest part, where we must 
else speak without knowing, and act as mere pup- 
pets pulled by powers behind the scenes. And as 
to the work that concerns us all equally, the dis- 
charge of our whole duty as moral beings, self-ward, 
man-ward, God-ward, let us, first and chief of 
all, establish and confirm those convictions that 
underlie all duty. 

The prime object of thought is to fix our beliefs 
as to fundamental truth. A great deal of the moral 
feebleness, and, if I may use a somewhat coarse 
word for which I can find no synonym, of the 
moral flabbiness, of our time is the necessary and 
logical consequence of the position which so many 
profess to hold as to fundamental beliefs. It is 
often deemed unworthy of a strong, active, enter- 



THOUGHT, FEELING, AND ACTION. 197 



prising mind to have any settled convictions, any- 
closed questions. Every new utterance of scepti- 
cism not only demands fresh inquiry, which is not 
to be blamed if there be time for it, but throws the 
mind back into vague doubt, and resolves beliefs 
that had begun to take shape into a formless chaos. 
I know men as old as I am, who have repeatedly 
worked their way almost to a settled belief in God 
and Christ and his Gospel, who, had the press lain 
still, would have had thirty or forty years of assured 
and comforting faith ; but whom every book or 
name that starts a fresh cosmogony or theory of 
religion plunges anew into a sea of doubt, so that 
they can never be said, for six consecutive months, 
to believe in God, or in their own souls, or in the 
reality of any objective truth. Now, I would not 
have the mind inexorably inhospitable ; for, by 
keeping its doors open, it often " entertains angels 
unawares." 'But there is a heaven-wide difference 
between a hospitable home and a wayside inn, with 
a welcome for every tramp ; and, where tramps re- 
sort, angels love not to enter. It is in our power 
so to consider the fundamental questions on which 
duty, obligation, the whole moral life, depends, 
that we shall reach satisfactory conclusions con- 
cerning them ; and, such conclusions once reached, 
we have a right to regard them as settled against mere 
suggested or reported doubts, and unless or until 
we are driven from them by unanswerable argu- 
ment. 



198 



BA CCA LA UREA TE SERMONS. 



But one chief reason of this fluctuation of belief 
is suggested by our text. We do not muse long 
enough for the fire to burn. Our beliefs lie loose, 
because we have not pondered them sufficiently to 
feel them. In travelling many years ago on Cape 
Cod, I saw whole leagues of 'coast on which the 
sand was driven before every breeze, and blown in- 
to fantastic mounds and hollows that took ever 
new shape under the passing eye. But in other 
places grass had been sown, and its fibrous roots 
had fastened the unstable soil, and converted the 
shifting sand into solid earth. Beliefs without feel- 
ing are like those wind-swept beaches ; and never so 
much like them as now, when, on the side of 
scepticism, breeze succeeds breeze with hardly a 
moment's intermission. But the emotions strike 
down their rootlets among the beliefs, coil their 
filaments around them, hold them when the wind 
sweeps over them, give them an increasing stability 
till they become immovable as the truths which 
they embody, and thus make of them a foundation 
on which the life-fabric may be built sure, firm and 
strong. 

My friends of the Graduating Class, permit me to 
urge upon you the momentous importance of fixed 
beliefs. I would by no means have you close 
your minds to the results, or even the conjectures 
or postulates, of advancing science. There is 
always a strong probability that the seeming 
advance is real, that the leaders of opinion are 



THOUGHT, FEELING, AND ACTION. 199 



moving in the right direction. But no scientific 
progress can disturb the evidence of those funda- 
mental truths, in which are involved the being 
and the well-being of the human soul. As to the 
existence and providence of God, the question is 
not that of rival cosmogonies, or of the natural 
history of man or of organized being, but the same 
question that has been before the mind ever since 
it began to philosophize, — Can chaos have become 
cosmos without a shaping will, an organizing pur- 
pose, a co-ordinating intelligence ? Does autonomy 
reside in brute matter ; or, rather, does not every 
accession of plastic power attributed to matter 
postulate the more imperatively the agency of 
Sovereign, Infinite Mind ? Thus, also, the validity 
and authority of the Christian religion depend 
not on any alleged accordance or discrepancy of 
its records with science, as to which it is absurd 
to expect of them any advance upon the opinions 
of their birthtime ; for conformity with these 
opinions alone could have made them intelligible 
to" those for whom they were first written, and 
scientific teaching is obviously beyond the legiti- 
mate scope of Divine revelation. Nor yet does 
Christianity depend for its truth on the literal 
authenticity of its canonical books, though I be- 
lieve that the investigations started by modern 
scepticism have tended not to disprove, but to 
confirm their authenticity. Christianity may safe- 
ly rest on its own evidence, — on its intrinsic worth ; 
on its verification in human history and experi- 



200 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



ence ; on the characters it has formed ; on the 
work it has wrought ; on its identity with all that 
is noblest, purest, most precious in humanity ; on 
its converting, sanctifying, energizing influence, 
wherever it has enshrined itself in the individual 
heart, given tone to society, moulded institutions, 
manners, and customs, become a factor in the life 
of communities and nations. 

But it is of little consequence that you give a 
mere assent to the truths of religion, — an assent 
that of itself may be too superficial to withstand 
doubt, cavil, or even ridicule. God and Christ, if 
they have any claims, claim your reverence and 
love. Your thought on these momentous themes 
has its only legitimate issue in feeling, and cannot 
be patient, habitual, profound, without lifting your 
souls in worship, and bringing you to the Saviour's 
feet as his learners and followers. 

With thought and feeling thus ordered, you are 
prepared for your life-work, God grant you all 
this preparation, that you may render loyal service 
in your time ; that every hopeful omen of this hour 
may be more than verified ; and that on your path 
may rest no shadows, but only growing, culminat- 
ing light ! May God's loving Providence and 
guiding Spirit be over and with you in all your 
way; and while, after your separation, you can 
never meet in unbroken numbers in this world, 
may not one be wanting in the glad society in 
which the faithful on earth shall be the redeemed 
in heaven ! 



XIV. 



HABIT. 

(1877.) 

" When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst 
whither thou wouldest ; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt 
stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry 
thee whither thou wouldest not." — John xxi. 18. 

This, the evangelist adds, was said to signify- 
by what death Peter should glorify God. It might 
equally be said to each of us, to signify by what life 
we shall glorify or dishonor Him. For Peter the 
prediction was fulfilled, when he was made ready 
by no gentle hands for the death which Christ 
had died. For us it is verified, for good or evil, 
in the power of habit, which covers and controls 
an ever larger portion of our lives as we advance 
in years ; so that there are more and more things 
predetermined for us and forced upon us by an 
alter ego, — another self, — which perhaps has be- 
come obsolete as regards our present conscious- 
ness, yet is no less potent, nay, even more potent 
over our words and deeds, than when it was the 
self of consciousness. 

This is an inevitable experience, and it is 
essential to our highest excellence and usefulness ; 



202 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



yet, like all laws of our moral being, it may work 
in opposite directions, and may do us as much 
harm as it can do us good. It is the essence of 
habit that its individual acts are either spontan- 
eous, or repeated with so slight a stress of volition 
as to demand little or no effort for their perform- 
ance. Without the tendency to form habits, I 
know not how there could be any improvement, 
any growth of mind or character. If it remained 
as difficult to do the work belonging to our seve- 
ral conditions in life as it was at the outset, we 
should never have time for any thing more, higher, 
or better. If it were as hard to practise virtues 
as it is to acquire them, our moral characters would 
remain stationary. But habit, by making our 
stated work easy, releases brain-power for improve- 
ment within its scope or beyond it; and by 
making the exercise of the moral qualities we 
have acquired spontaneous, it releases soul-power 
for moral progress in the same or other directions. 
Thus the diligent worker, and he who aspires to- 
ward a high standard of moral excellence, are 
constantly forming new habits, while rejoicing in 
the benign sway of those already formed. 

But though this be true in detail in every 
period of life, habit has certain general relations 
to its several periods. Youth voluntarily forms 
habits ; riper age is governed by them. The young 
man girds himself, and goes whither he will ; the 
man in the prime, and still more in the decline, of 



HABIT. 



203 



life is girded by habit, and carried, if not where he 
would not, at least where he cannot help being 
carried. Habit is a subject in youth ; in after 
years, an absolute monarch, — it may be, a benefi- 
cent sovereign ; it may be, a hateful and loathsome 
despot. In early life the frequent change of con- 
dition — from school to school with altered sur- 
roundings and influences, from school to college, 
and so on, till the profession or mode of life is 
determined — breaks the continuity of habit, de- 
lays the formation of fixed habits, and often arrests 
bad habits that would otherwise have become 
fixed. In after life essential changes are infre- 
quent, and habit becomes indurated, verifying a 
significant saying of one of the Hebrew prophets : 
" He hath been at ease from his youth, and he 
hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied 
from vessel to vessel ; therefore his taste remained 
in him, and his scent is not changed." 

You, my friends of the graduating class, are ap- 
proaching this period ; some of you, probably, have 
reached it. Life will be more continuous than it 
has been ; and it has seemed to me that I could 
not select for my parting address to you a more 
appropriate subject than the lifelong habits which 
you most need to form, or, if formed, to retain and 
cherish, — the habits on which your success and 
permanent well-being must be contingent. 

1. Foremost among these essential habits I would 



204 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



place that of doing thoroughly whatever you do. 
Under our present college system, it must be 
admitted that there are strong temptations to less 
than thorough work. All parts of your required, 
and even of your chosen, course have not been of 
equal interest to you. Much of it has not had in 
your own minds the importance which you will 
hereafter recognize. There have been many en- 
grossing interests aside from your curriculum, — 
college societies, athletic sports, social engage- 
ments, the busy life of the outside world. The 
minimum required, nay, even considerably more, 
has been attainable by somewhat superficial study, 
and the work of the more diligent has been largely 
available for the less diligent. You have labored 
under the disadvantage — necessary, so far as I can 
see, yet none the less to be regretted — of not having 
had definite ends, connected with your future mode 
of life, present to your consciousness in each of the 
departments of study, which from the very nature 
of the case have been determined for you, not by 
you. From this time forth you will be in the main 
self-dependent as to subjects and methods of study, 
and as to the distribution of time and the relative 
importance to be assigned to various pursuits and 
employments. Most of you will enter at once, 
either on callings which you will pursue on your 
own account, or on studies that in all their parts 
have an immediate bearing on your chosen pro- 
fessions. Thorough work in these careers will be 



HARIT. 



205 



fully as much your interest as your duty. Sham 
work will be detected, or will come to nought. 
Superficial work will not retain its polished sur- 
face ; but, like bad veneering, will be chipped 
away, and betray the worthless material beneath. 

Some of you will engage in business other than 
literary or professional. Let me beg you to under- 
take nothing which you do not understand as fully 
as you have the means of understanding it. Make 
yourselves, as rapidly and as completely as possible, 
masters of the business in which you engage, com- 
mencing — if you can — at the beginning, and pass- 
ing up by successive grades. Graduates of this 
college have repeatedly gone hence into machine- 
shops, or factories, or inferior clerkships, and have 
thus become practically conversant with the most 
laborious elementary details of their intended life- 
work ; and I have never known an instance of this 
kind, in which the method has not been justified 
by sure and rapid progress ; while there have not 
been wanting cases of an opposite kind, in which 
those who imagined that their college training gave 
them brevet rank in some secular calling have 
failed to maintain it, and have been compelled with 
shame to take a lower place. 

Some of you will be teachers ; and I might tell 
you that those who are many years your seniors 
would not dare to remain teachers, did they cease 
to be learners. I would have you never presume 
to teach any thing merely because you once 



206 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



learned it ; but only after so reviewing it that you 
have at the present time a clear and full under- 
standing of it. Nothing can be more fugacious 
than the rudiments of the very branches in which 
you think you excel. They are almost always less 
at the command even of a good scholar when he 
leaves than when he enters college ; and the 
greatest benefit that can be derived from a year or 
two spent in teaching is the fixing of these rudi- 
ments in the memory, so that they are never lost 
afterward. If teaching be your permanent profes- 
sion, incessant and careful study is the only price 
at which you can obtain a position worthy your 
endeavor. If it be but a temporary vocation, still 
the habit of thoroughness, or the reverse, now 
formed, will go with you into your subsequent 
life to make or to mar it. 

In professional, classical, or scientific study, 
which for many of you will occupy the next fol- 
lowing years, concentrated application to one 
thing at a time is the only method that can make 
you scholars. Frequent change of work is attend- 
ed with a waste of time in beginnings and endings, 
and often with no little confusion of thought and 
intermingling of subjects that do not belong 
together. In many departments, I know, some 
alternation in the kind of work is necessary ; but 
where it is so, take for each subject solid portions 
of time ; and take at a time, if it be possible, 
solid portions of a subject, so that there shall be 



HABIT. 



207 



mastered within a given period an entire sub- 
division, branch, or topic which shall have a unity 
and completeness of its own, — otherwise, much of 
your work either will need to be repeated or will 
remain imperfect. Do not account as thorough 
study that which is narrowed within the limits of 
the subject in hand. There is no subject which has 
not conterminous subjects, — none which has not its 
connections with a genus of which it is a species, 
and with other kindred species and genera ; and 
the more collateral study you bestow on any sub- 
ject, the better do you comprehend its true place 
and bearings and its relative importance. For lack 
of this collateral study, an avowed specialist in a 
profession or science often shows himself inferior, 
even in his specialty, to those for whom it has been 
but one subject among many. 

You will, many of you, be writers. There are 
two purposes for which you may write, both de- 
manding thoroughness, though of different types. 
You may write to serve some temporary end, to 
produce an immediate impression, to instruct or 
persuade the public directly and transiently be- 
fore you. In this case you need a firm grasp of 
the subject in hand, at least in its recent history 
and its nearest relations ; and you cannot afford 
any thing less than pure, chaste, and perspicuous 
diction, accuracy of statement, and pertinence of 
illustration. But there is a degree of elaboration 
which would be superfluous in work not intended 
to last. 



208 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

But you may, — some of you, I trust, will, — in 
due season, write for a public larger in both space 
and time. In this case thoroughness implies, on 
the one hand, conversance with all that has been 
worthily done in the department which you have 
undertaken, and with all accessible materials ; and, 
on the other hand, the vigorous exercise upon it 
of your own powers in creating, remodelling, 
opening new ranges of thought, following up new 
routes of inquiry or speculation, making substan- 
tial additions to what others have wrought before 
you. Moreover, for what is meant to be perman- 
ent, mere writing calamo currente is utterly inad- 
missible. Your style must be fully on a level 
with your thought, and must have the graces 
which are born only of slow and heedful toil, dili- 
gent elaboration, and careful pruning. Of the 
current literature of the day, much that is both 
thoughtful and brilliant is evanescent 'simply for 
lack of thoroughness in the details of method and 
composition. Many an author long outlives his 
promised immortality ; and not a few first editions 
furnish more copies for papermakers than for 
readers. Some years ago I saw in Omaha, for a 
while the capital of Nebraska, a State-house of fair 
material and impressive aspect, on a hill command- 
ing the whole surrounding territory. On ap- 
proaching it, I found it a ruin, though but ten 
years old. It had been built in such haste that 
even the cement would not hold, and no two 



HABIT, 



209 



adjacent stones had kept the angle at which they 
were laid. The old State-house of Massachusetts, 
superseded for public uses more than half a cen- 
tury ago, still has in its massive foundation and 
solid walls centuries of life, if crowded travel and 
traffic shall not demand its premature removal. 
Not unapt types are these of brain-fabrics equally 
meant to last. How many splendid ruins of 
ambitious reputations, even less than ten years 
old, strew the literature of our time ! Meanwhile, 
the old authors, who knew how to build, and put 
only thorough work into their structures, enjoy a 
perpetual youth and an undecaying fame. 

I have made these specifications, hoping that 
they may give you hints of the thoroughness 
which I would have your life-long habit, but which 
can be your habit only if you form it early, — only 
if you start with the resolve that you will hence- 
forth do whatever you do to the best of your 
ability. There are those now on the stage in 
every honorable career, who are incapable of 
doing less than their best ; and there is not one of 
them who formed this habit midway in his course. 
For you it must be formed now, soon, or never ; 
and, if it be not formed, your failures will out- 
number your successes ; your reputation will fall 
short of your ability ; your service in your day 
and generation will be far below what God and 
man can rightfully claim of your opportunities and 
privileges. 



210 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



2. Another habit which I would have you 
form is that of unselfishness. You are, I trust, all 
of you, ambitious. There are two careers open 
before you, — a selfish and a generous career, on 
either of which you may take your chances of 
success. You may be supremely solicitous for 
promotion, place, office, emolument, at whatever 
cost. You may acquire the habit of constant self- 
reference, — of endeavoring always to be foremost, 
not in solid attainments or merit, but in the com- 
petition for such prizes as depend on special 
endeavor rather than on substantial desert. Push- 
ing, striving, supplanting, may become a fixed and 
inevitable habit. It is a habit which can have, in 
the consciousness of those who have formed it, 
little to commend it to such as shall come after 
them. If they attain their aims, they lose more in 
the esteem and love of those around them than 
they gain in position or emolument. They are 
often mere pariahs in the society in which they 
affect pre-eminence. They may have satellites, 
dependents, flatterers, but no friends. I might 
name, were they not better left unnamed, among 
those who were my pupils here more than forty 
years ago, some in whom this habit was even then 
fully formed, and destined to be life-long. Often 
shunned, never sought, so far as loving or intimate 
fellowship was concerned, they had already creat- 
ed a desert around them, which remained un- 
peopled as long as they lived ; and I think that 



HABIT. 



211 



with the lapse of years they painfully felt the lack 
and loneliness, and could they have recommenced 
their career, they would have been unselfish for 
very self's sake. 

There are specially cogent reasons why your 
ambition should be unselfish. You are beneficiaries 
of the public to a pre-eminent degree. Your pri- 
vileges here are in great part derived from gratu- 
ities of the dead and the living, accumulated from 
the day of small things when every gift represent- 
ed a conscious sacrifice. There are, too, many 
services which only a well educated man can wor- 
thily perform, and which are sure to devolve on 
those who have the college stamp of liberal culture. 
You will be ere long called upon for such services, 
and they may be rightfully demanded of you on the 
very ground of your reputed fitness for them. 
Whether you render them or not will depend on 
early habit. There are those who, when a claim of 
this kind is made upon them, ask spontaneously, 
44 How shall I evade or decline it ? " There are others 
who ask as spontaneously, 44 How shall I find time 
and make room for it ? " These self-questionings 
proceed, respectively, from opposite types of char- 
acter, — the one, the absorption of self in self ; the 
other, the identification of the self with its social 
relations and the duties that belong to them. 

Now I would not have you neglect due self-cult- 
ure ; but I would have you regard self in all its con- 
tents, and cherish, educate, and mature the self- 



212 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



hood which has common interests with neighbors, 
fellow-citizens, the community, country, and race, 
no less than that maimed and misdeveloped self- 
hood which ignores all but self. You will never 
find reason, even as regards what is commonly call- 
ed self-culture, to regret the seeming sacrifices of 
an unselfish life. In such a life the mind may take 
in less from books, may evolve less from reflection ; 
but, on the other hand, its vision is made quicker 
and keener, its apprehensive faculties gain a stronger 
grasp, its executive poAvers acquire a more effi- 
cient energy. Except in the mere details of scho- 
larship, the intellect profits more by healthful act- 
ivity on the varied and exacting occasions of real 
life, than by exclusive devotion to what are called 
by way of eminence intellectual pursuits. The true 
scholar blends and unifies the studious and the ac- 
tive life. Cicero certainly was inferior to none of 
his contemporaries, perhaps to no man of any age, 
in attainments and in the love of study ; yet none 
could have been more ready than he for the ser- 
vice of friends and of the State. There can be no 
more authentic testimony than his, when he writes : 
u The knowledge and contemplation of nature are 
defective and incomplete, if not followed up by 
active duty. Those err, who say that the man of 
surpassing genius, could all his needs be supplied as 
by a divining-rod, would give himself up wholly 
to knowledge and science. He would still shun 
solitude, and seek society \ he would want to teach 



HABIT. 



213 



as well as to learn, to impart no less than to receive ; 
and the virtue which is of service for the union and 
defence of the community is to be preferred to that 
which confines itself to the pursuit of knowledge 
and science." 

3. Above all, I would urge upon you the habit 
of conscientious action. By this I mean, not that 
of doing only what seems to you right, but that of 
testing your conduct in all its details by the stan- 
dard of absolute right. This is by no means the 
universal habit of really good men. Every man, 
good or bad, has his habitual standard. Some men 
refer every question of conduct to immediate plea- 
sure ; some, to immediate interest; some, to ultimate 
self-advancement ; some, to public opinion, general 
custom, or the tastes of a clique or party. Of good 
men, some lay down rules for themselves which are 
at the outset or in the main coincident with the 
right, yet in particular cases diverge widely from 
it. It is very convenient, it saves time and trouble, 
to say, " I make it my unvarying rule ; '' and in the 
great majority of instances the rule may justify it- 
self in the conduct which it dictates : but unless it 
be a literal transcript from the nature of things, 
from the law of justice and love, there will occur 
cases in which it authorizes wrong, it may be, atro- 
cious wrong. Especially in our conduct towards 
others, in our treatment of their claims upon us, in 
our judgment of their merits, in our action with 



214 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



regard to their interests, the variables are so nu- 
merous in proportion to the constants, and so very 
widely diverse, that no narrower rule than the law 
of justice, and that, the justice which is identical 
with love, can be of universal application. Very 
often two cases that come equally under the same 
artificial and — in the main — wise rule are so widely 
unlike in their actual merits, that what is simple 
justice and substantial kindness in the one is in the 
other both unjust and unkind. The same thing is 
true with regard to rules more strictly personal. 
We can have no rule of life, unless it be literally 
identical with some absolute moral duty, which 
may not, if adhered to, sometimes place us in a 
false position, — in a position alien from the very 
principles and spirit in which the rule had birth. 

Hence the necessity of keeping the standard of 
the absolutely true, just, and kind ever at hand for 
the trial of such individual questions of conduct as 
are perpetually offering themselves for our decision. 
Hence, especially, the necessity of subordinating 
all our other habits, before we consent to form them, 
to this rightfully sovereign habit of conscientious 
action ; so that our habits shall be not derived from, 
but identical with the reality of things, with justice 
to our fellow-men, and with that unfailing kindness 
without which justice cannot be. To form this 
sovereign habit may require somewhat arduous 
self-discipline ; but when it is once formed, its ex- 
ercise is spontaneous, and the judgment under it 



HABIT. 



215 



can seldom be otherwise than prompt and decisive. 
As I have said, we always tacitly refer our conduct 
to certain fixed standards ; and it is as easy to ask 
and answer the questions, " Is it intrinsically fit- 
ting ? Is it just ? Is it kind ? " as it is to ask and 
answer the questions, " Is it expedient ? Is it gain- 
ful ? Is it in accordance with the special rule which 
I have laid down for myself? " 

These habits which I have specified, — that of 
thorough work in whatever you do, that of unself- 
ish living, that of constant reference to conscience 
in the whole conduct of life, — include numberless 
minor habits, which will be tributary to them or will 
grow naturally from them. They are essential to 
your self-respect, to your rightful position in society, 
to your fair account before the ever open tribunal 
of the Supreme Judge. 

My friends, you have before you a future which 
God has placed most largely at your own control. 
The great essentials of well-being await only your 
choice. The change of life before you invites your 
careful review of such habits as you have begun to 
form, that you may deliberately determine which 
of them to retain and cherish, which to repudiate. 
If in this respect you need a new departure, it is 
hardly probable that you will ever have another 
opportunity so favorable. 

Take with you my fervent good wishes for your 
merited success and deserved favor with God and 



216 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

man ; and may the blessing of our Father, the guid- 
ance of our Saviour, and the assurance of His re- 
deeming love be yours in this life, and in the life 
to come ! 



XV. 



THOROUGH LIFE-WORK. 

(1878.) 

" Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, Good is the word of the 
Lord which thou hast spoken. He said moreover, For there 
shall be peace and truth in my days." — Isaiah xxxix. 8. 

These words show us a type of character to 
which we may well look on an occasion like this, — 
not for example, indeed, but for admonition, which 
may have at least the merit of timeliness, as 
addressed to those who are just entering on a new 
stage of being, whether of active life or of express 
preparation for future activity. The Jewish king 
from whom we have our text was a good man, but 
in a small way. It has been announced to him 
by the prophet that, though he will pass the residue 
of his days in tranquillity, the direst calamities will 
whelm his nation in ruin, and his own children will 
be captives and slaves in Babylon. His reply is 
not that of pious resignation to the painful will of 
God, but of self-congratulation that these evils 
which are sure to come will not come in his time. 



218 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



" After me the deluge ; but what care I, if the 
fountains of the great deep and the bottles of 
heaven only remain closed while I stay?" Let me 
ask, Has not precisely this feeling very large in- 
fluence in preventing or arresting reform and im- 
provement in society, in the State, in all the grave 
interests of mankind ? There are quiet, respectable 
citizens, good men according to their own mean 
and narrow standard, who are always in favor of 
things as they are, though there be growing and 
threatening evils, storm-clouds in the horizon, mut- 
terings of distant thunder, because they think the 
clouds will not gather or the thunder-stroke fall 
till after they are gone ; content with a quietness 
which will last through their time, though they 
know very well that it will not last much longer. 
Such men are obstacles in the way of progress, 
hinderances to philanthropy, ciphers in the motive 
force of the community, as it yearns and strives for 
a future better than the present. 

But the same disposition frequently assumes 
an active form. There are those who determine 
that, come what may, there shall, at all events, be 
peace in their day. Such are the men who, in 
public life, postpone accumulating evils by meas- 
ures of compromise, which they well know are 
temporary, but which they think will last out their 
time, and give them popularity with the abettors 
of wrong, and with those who are too timid or 
lethargic to attempt to check it. They have their 



THOROUGH LIFE-WORK. 219 

reward. They get the popularity they seek : it 
lingers about their names, so long as their flatterers 
survive ; but impartial posterity will write their 
story as of men who purposely sowed the wind, 
well knowing that those who should come after 
them would have to reap the whirlwind. 

In more private but important trusts, there are 
those who, in the same spirit, evade all perplexing 
questions, all arduous responsibilities, who modify 
duty so as to make it smooth and easy to all con- 
cerned, who drop all difficult meshes in the web 
they are weaving, and perhaps victimize their suc- 
cessors for their own comfort. This has not in- 
frequently been the secret of an unmerited reputa- 
tion ; and often has the blame of the negligence 
fallen on those whose hard duty it has been to 
supply the omissions and to right the wrong. 

The disposition of which I am speaking, in every 
department of life, prompts one to do no more than 
will meet the immediate demand or exigency, to 
resort to all kinds of makeshifts, of temporary ex- 
pedients, to aim at immediate success rather than 
at thoroughness and faithfulness. Thus, the worker 
with hand or brain, in his love of present ease, 
slights his work at points where he thinks its 
defects will remain undetected, — is superficial 
because it will cost him time and labor to be 
thorough. In handwork, we have all verified the 
wastefulness of this habit, to our cost, annoyance, 
and loss. In brainwork, a volume of the curiosi- 



220 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

ties of literature might be made up of misquota- 
tions, wrong references, and inadvertent omissions, 
which have been transmitted in a long series by 
successive writers, every one of whom has professed 
the fresh study of original authorities. Under this 
same influence, you are well aware that our college 
work has often suffered, and with it those who have 
sought their ease more lovingly than wisely. The 
student omits the faithful application which alone 
can make him master of his subject, acquires just 
so much as will tide him over an impending ex- 
amination, only to find, as he passes on to more 
advanced portions of his work, that what he had 
slighted is essential even to the minimum of what 
is now required of him. 

This same tendency to consult present ease 
rather than permanent right or good is constantly 
and disastrously witnessed in the formation of 
habits. Many of us fall into more habits than we 
choose. Those we choose are generally worth 
keeping : as to the rest, the word " fall " is well 
used. It is oftener than not a fall, — a descent into 
a lower moral state than we should otherwise be 
in. But we retain habits which we disapprove, 
and which we do not mean to keep always, be- 
cause it would give us trouble to drop or change 
them. 

These instances may suffice to illustrate the 
tendency, which, in its passive form, is exhibited 
in our text, — to which in its active form we have 



THOROUGH LIFE-WOBK. 



221 



all been tempted, and perhaps have, all of us, so 
far yielded to it, that were it said, " Let him who 
is without sin cast the first stone," there would be 
none who would dare to throw it. 

In contrast with this habit of negligence, 
slighted work, living for the present or the imme- 
diate future, I want to urge upon you the impera- 
tive duty of thoroughness, fidelity, work into 
which you shall put mind and soul and strength to 
your utmost ability, work that shall stand the test 
of time, the severest human scrutiny, the inspec- 
tion of our omniscient Judge and Rewarder. 

This thoroughness, if it be indeed thorough- 
ness, must, in the first place, belong to the princi- 
ples that underlie the whole conduct of life. 
There may be a seeming goodness which has 
nothing of the soul of goodness in it, — negatively 
excellent, yet of doubtful promise in a world of 
temptation and peril. There are favoring cur- 
rents of influence, example, and circumstance, in 
which a young man of good dispositions and feeble 
passions may float on for a while, unstained by 
surrounding evil, more innocent than virtuous, 
hardly needing the vigorous oar-arm to stem 
counter-currents or to keep clear of shoals or 
breakers. I know of no more significant chapter 
of sacred history than that in which we are told of 
one of the Hebrew kings that he did right in the 
sight of the Lord so long as Jehoiada, the high 
priest, lived and kept watch over him, but, when 



222 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



Jehoiada died, fell at once into the worst ways of 
those who had held an evil pre-eminence before 
him. A young man in our time often has a mani- 
fold and multiform Jehoiada in home, society, 
immediate motive, prospective plans, favorable 
surroundings, and thus without any set purpose of 
right, or fixed rules of conduct, or settled princi- 
ples, he may meet all just expectations. But how 
will it be with him when Jehoiada is dead, when he 
stands alone, when objects that seem to him de- 
sirable can be pursued only through tortuous or 
miry paths, when with maturing manhood passion 
grows strong, when he is thrown daily among men 
unscrupulous, yet successful and prosperous ? A 
memory as long as mine can furnish not a few sad 
answers, in life-stories in which the brightest 
promise has been extinguished in shame and 
misery. It behooves you, more than all things 
else, to make your conduct absolutely your own, 
the result in every act of your own independent 
volition, and that volition based on substantial 
reasons, or rather on a substantial reason. That 
reason is the absolute right. Of this I do not be- 
lieve that you will ever find yourselves in doubt. 
The practical questions which you will be tempted 
to ask, and perhaps to imagine that you are asking 
moral qnestions, will be in some such form as this, 
How far may I modify or compromise the right for 
ease, convenience, good fellowship, — as the king in 
our text would have said, " that I may have peace 



THOROUGH LIFE-WORK. 



223 



in my time " ? How near the confessedly wrong 
can I come without losing reputation ? How far 
can I cross the border line, and yet secure an 
easy and safe return ? You will find, as life opens 
before you, that to know the right is not enough : 
you will need irresistible motive to do the right ; 
and I know not where that motive is to be found 
but in the fear and love of God, the faith of 
Christ, and the powers of the world to come. 

With reference to the great truths of religion, 
it is too much the habit of our time to seek tem- 
porary peace rather than serious conviction ; to 
yield to the careless, half-sceptical tone of feeling 
which one may easily catch from those around 
him, rather than to inquire for himself whether 
these things are so. One fact demands your dili- 
gent heed. It is this: The characters that you 
would take for exemplars have been formed in the 
school of Christ, shaped, energized, irradiated by 
him. The presumption, then, is in favor of the 
genuineness of his claim to be believed, obeyed, 
followed. This claim you are bound to consider 
and weigh thoroughly for yourselves, not on the 
sceptical side alone, but on all sides. Imagine not 
that religious faith is easy credulity. There are, 
among the firmest Christian believers, many who 
are intimately familiar with the whole literature of 
modern scepticism, and have only been strength- 
ened by it. On so momentous a subject, if you 
would be thorough, you must form your own 



224 BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



opinions, not imbibe them ; you must dig around 
the foundations of religious belief for yourselves, 
and learn for yourselves whether they rest on a 
rock or on sand. I know that such faithful in- 
quiry will plant you on the immovable rock, the 
corner-stone' of the spiritual temple, Jesus Christ. 
And it is only on that foundation that the thorough, 
faithful life-work can be built. If, then, you 
would have, not peace for a brief day, but sub- 
stantial, enduring, eternal peace, yours must be a 
life of Christian principle, — your reason for what 
you do must ever be, It is right in the sight of 
God and by the rule of Christ. Any thing short 
of this is a life of shifts and expedients, the mere 
yielding to the pressure and ministering to the 
ease of the passing moment, in whatever direction 
it may urge you, — a precarious and perilous way of 
living while it seems safe, and more likely than not, 
at some early period, to lead you into wrong and 
evil which now seem to you utterly impossible. 
The vulgar use of the verb "corner " has a strong 
moral significance. The right-meaning person, who 
lives on day by day with the sole purpose of mak- 
ing life easy, is apt to find himself suddenly corner- 
ed, — placed in a position where his only alterna- 
tive is to declare and abide by principles which 
he does not possess, or to take an open position 
(which he has not yet taken) among the enemies 
of virtue. He has slidden till he can slide no 
longer, and now he must take a decisive step 



TROR 0 UGR LIFE- WORK. 



225 



without the preparation of spirit to insure the Tight- 
ness of that step. 

The determination to be thorough in one's life- 
work is a very important element in what lies or 
will lie before many of you, — the choice of a profes- 
sion. I think that it would have altered the choice of 
not a few in every graduating class that I have known. 
A profession has often been chosen, not because the 
student was conscious of any taste or fitness for it, 
but because he thought he could, as the phrase 
runs, get along in it, or even because, in the afflu- 
ence of other resources, he would have no need of 
getting along in it. It used to be almost universal, 
it is still altogether too common, for a college grad 
uate to choose one of the so-termed learned pro- 
fessions, not because he felt any inward calling 
thereto, but because they had been traditionally 
identified with a liberal education. I wish they 
were so still. But they are no longer learned pro- 
fessions. In their lower ranks, and sometimes on 
the confines of the higher, not often within them, 
are men of very slender culture, so that a profes- 
sional position is no longer evidence as to the kind 
or compass of one's preliminary training. Moreover, 
these professions are now so crowded as to offer no 
adequate compensation for any thing short, I will 
not say, of eminence, but of excellence. Taken 
man by man, I do not believe that the average in- 
come of a professional man in the United States is 
as large as that of a journeyman mechanic. In the 



226 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



higher walks, there is always room, reward, honor 
for new aspirants of excelling genius or capacity ; 
and such persons would make places for themselves, 
if they did not find them. But there is not one of 
you who is not able of excelling in some calling ; 
and I would beg you each to choose that in which 
he is consciously capable of doing the most thorough 
work, of employing all his powers to the best ad- 
vantage, of being able not merely to glide along 
quietly, but truly to live as a working force in his 
day and generation. It is time that it were better un- 
derstood in our country that it is not the profession 
that reflects honor on the man, but the man on the 
profession. We need able and educated men in 
agriculture and manufactures, and there is not 
a department under those titles that may not be 
elevated, not alone in name, but in its permanent 
value as a factor in the general well-being', by 
such recruits as our colleges might furnish ; 
while there are those who can never distinguish 
themselves as professional men, yet in other call- 
ings would develop capacity of high order and 
commanding reputation. But -it cannot be too em- 
phatically said that he who chooses a profession, I 
say not above, but aside from his capacity, is very 
unlikely to do honest, thorough work in it, will al- 
most inevitably live by temporary expedients, will 
do what will give peace in his day, what will satisfy 
or stave off the immediate demand upon him, and 
instead of advancing will grow less, and not beau- 



THOR 0 UGH LIFE- WORK. 



227 



tifully less, in professional reputation and influ- 
ence. 

Let me now say a word on what lies close be- 
fore most of you, the work of the coming year ; for 
most of you will be engaged either in teaching, in 
general study, or in preparation for some specific 
calling. It will be, perhaps, the most decisive year 
of your lives as to the formation of habits of study 
or labor. Many of you need only to take your 
college habits with you. But if there are those 
who have worked only to meet pressing demands, 
superficially, with a view to immediate peace and 
not to enduring benefit, this habit must be changed 
now, or probably never. Some of you mean to be 
teachers for a year or two, and then to take some 
other mode of life. The temptation may be strong 
to perform the minimum of work — if not in seem- 
ing quantity, in depth and thoroughness — that will 
avert complaint, and carry you easily through your 
allotted time of service. But, beside the dishonesty 
of slighted work, and the detriment to others, you 
cannot afford it for yourselves. The habit thus 
formed will almost'inevitably follow you into what 
you mean shall be your permanent life-work. If 
you intend to do that thoroughly, discipline your- 
selves in the mean time by doing nothing to serve 
a turn, but every thing with rigid fidelity, with all 
that it can contain of mind and heart. In prepara- 
tion for your life-work, whatever it be, you may 
seek peace by evading difficulties, by creeping 



228 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



round obstacles, by skimming the surface of deep 
things, by adapting your labor to the tests — at best 
imperfect — by which it will be measured, by the 
endeavor to pass creditably rather than to acquire, 
comprehend, understand, and master every branch 
of every subject, and to take every step of advance 
warily on solid ground. But the peace thus gained 
will be won at the cost of permanent capacity, suc- 
cess, and reputation. Your only safe method will 
be to do whatever ought to be done in fitting time 
and order, to the best of your ability ; to gain higher 
standing ground by surmounting every obstacle ; to 
avert future floundering beyond your depth by 
sounding every deep in your way, and to advance 
to new work by leaving only finished work behind 
you. You will thus carry into life the only culture 
and habits by which you can have command of 
your resources, control of your surroundings, 
reasonable self-confidence in your undertakings, 
and a jnst claim to the confidence of those whose 
material interests, health, reputation, or spiritual 
guidance may be committed to your charge. 

Let me now urge upon you some of the motives 
which should enforce thoroughness in all the parts 
and details of whatever it may be given you to do. 
We never know to what crucial, probing tests our 
work will be exposed. The superficial has its in- 
terior laid bare. The veneering which imitates 
solid work is chipped away, the plating which looks 
like silver is worn off; and the cheap wood or the 



THOROUGH LIFE-WORK. 



229 



base metal comes to light. The ease of to-day is 
the shame of to-morrow ; the peace of this year, the 
torment of the next. The idleness of the boy is 
the ignorance of the man. The negligences and 
omissions of youth are the discomfort and thrift- 
lessness of age. There is a close continuity in our 
life-work. We have time enough, but none too 
much. The past can be repaired only at the cost 
of the present and to the detriment of the future. 
In situations in which constant vigilance is required 
in night-watchmen, the watchman is often required 
to make some adjustment of a sort of clockwork, 
to put in a bar, or to remove one, with the stroke 
of every hour ; and, if he sleeps on his post, the 
morning betrays him. Our life-work is just such 
a system of machinery ; only the detection may 
come upon us unawares, and the omitted work be 
betrayed at any moment. Retribution is but 
another name for consequence, — the unfailing re- 
lation of cause and effect ; and there can be con- 
ceived no more fearful, no more hopeful retribu- 
tion than this. Our past furnishes the sole factors 
for our future. We are precisely what we make 
ourselves or suffer ourselves to be. Peace in aught 
but faithful, thorough, conscientious duty is no 
peace. 

But, apart from these considerations, there is 
an intrinsic fitness in the sincere and thorough 
doing of whatever we do. It ought to offend our 
moral taste, our sense of proportion, symmetry, 



230 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



and beauty, to be superficial, to be mere eye- 
servants. Yet in one most momentous signifi- 
cance of the term let us be eye-servants. Let 
us never forget the Supreme Taskmaster, whose 
command comes to us in every relation of life, in 
every call of duty, and under whose omniscient 
eye all our work is wrought. He who works as 
in his sight can do no sham-work, and on him are 
we to depend, on his impartial Providence, for a 
recompense measured by our fidelity. Nor is it to 
a far-off, but to an immediate award that we are 
to look, — to a judgment that is set and books that 
are opened, not in a remote and vague eternity, but 
now and ever. 

The king in our text said more than he really 
cared to say. " There shall be peace and truth in 
my days." It was peace rather than truth that he 
was rejoicing in, — a peace, too, that had no under- 
lying element of truth, — not a veritable peace, but 
a brief, hollow truce with inevitable calamity, 
desolation, and woe. Truth and peace are, indeed, 
inseparable. But truth lies, not in succumbing 
to evils, but in resisting them ; not in ease, but 
in labor ; not in negligence, but in painstaking 
thoroughness ; not in evading responsibility, but 
in meeting it bravely and bearing it loyally ; not 
in shunning conflict, storm, and tempest, but in 
waging the warfare and buffeting the gale ; not in 
the relaxation, but in the full and vigorous tension 
of every nerve and muscle of the inner man ; not 



THOROUGH LIFE-WORK. 



231 



in earthly repose, but in a heaven won, a heaven 
begun. Not Peace and truth, but Truth and peace, 
should our motto read, — truth, the way of peace ; 
peace, the goal of truth. Be truth ever our aim ; 
God will care for the peace, and the peace of God 
that passeth all understanding shall be ours. 

My friends of the graduating class, in the con- 
gratulations and hopes of this season, I cannot but 
feel sadly with you the vacant part in your Class- 
day services, — the translation of one so worthy 
of your pre-eminent regard to a higher school, and 
to the realm of purer song than could have found 
voice in earthly rhythm.* That you so honored 
and loved such a man is to your great and endur- 
ing honor ; and never have I been more strongly 
impressed with the high standard of sentiment, 
the just moral feeling, the true appreciation of 
genuine worth, characteristic of our University, 
than in the unanimous tribute of regret and affec- 
tion, the tender, loving offices, the sweet service of 
song, the solemn reverence, which hallowed the 
church, the chapel, and the grave, to which you 
.bore and where you laid all that was mortal of 
your class-mate. With no advantages but such as 
God gave him and his merit won, he illustrated 
my theme of to-day, not peace, but truth. His 
aims, though mediately for this earthly life, were 
more than earthly; and they have been realized 

* Earnest Upton Waters, who was to have been Class-Poet, 
died May 4, 1878, 



232 



BA CCA LA UBEA TE SEBMONS. 



too soon for us, but happily for him. We could 
not but feel the appropriateness of those words of 
ancient days that were read at his funeral : " Hon- 
orable age is not that which standeth in length of 
time, nor that is measured by number of years. 
But wisdom is gray hair unto men, and an un- 
spotted life is old age. He pleased God, and was 
beloyed of him. He, being made perfect in a short 
time, fulfilled a long time. For his soul pleased 
the Lord ; therefore hasted he to take him away." 
His was a truly consecrated life. Genius and un- 
flagging industry would have given him a foremost 
place in whatever might have been his chosen 
career, whether in art in which the first-fruits of 
his endeavors gave prophecy of a rich harvest, or 
in the ministry of the Gospel, his alternative 
choice, which he would have adorned by the 
purity and sanctity of his life even more than by 
the rare gifts of poetic fancy, eloquent thought, 
and rhetorical power which would have insured his 
eminence. Let his memory be an inspiration. Be 
it ours so to live that there shall be for us like 
sorrow when we go hence, and like assurance that 
Death is but the gate-keeper of the higher life. 

My friends, bear with you the lifelong regard 
of your teachers here. Think not that the rapid 
succession of classes impairs our happy remem- 
brance of those with whom we are associated in 
the class-room, or our glad recognition of their 
merited success and well-won honor. Be assured 



THOBOUGH LIFE-WOBK. 233 



that success and honor are to be obtained only by 
deserving and earning them. Such has been your 
college experience ; it will equally be your ex- 
perience in the outside world. May God give you 
the best you can desire ; and yet more, the heart 
to desire only his best gifts. You will part at 
Commencement, never to meet again on earth but 
with diminished numbers ; when there shall be 
not one of your names unstarred on the Catalogue, 
may there be an unbroken Class-meeting where 
there shall be no parting. 



XVI. 



THE CLOUD, AND THE VOICE OUT OF 
THE CLOUD. 

(1879.) 

" They feared as they entered into the cloud. And there 
came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved 
Son: hear Him." — Luke ix. 34, 35. 

There is in these words an appropriateness to 
the present occasion, which is probably felt by no 
one so strongly as by your preacher, who year 
after year has watched with loving solicitude suc- 
cessive classes as they have entered into the 
cloud ; for such, my friends, - is the next step 
on your life-way. For most of you, life — if it 
were to be spared on earth — has been thus far 
easily calculable, — arranged and provided for 
without any alternative course being distinctly 
contemplated. Now a doubt, before unknown, 
hangs over your future, which, under Providence, 
passes for the most part into your own disposal. 
There will probably be no epoch of your coming 
years when it will be so difficult for you or for 
your friends to foresee your earthly future, as it is 
now. A cloud rests upon it, luminous, indeed, to 



THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 



235 



your undimmecl and hopeful vision, yet not for 
this the more translucent; and if you think you 
see through it, what you see is only your own day- 
dreams reflected from its surface. You have 
reason to fear as you enter into the cloud, if there 
be aught in the future that can harm you. At 
the same time you may dismiss all fear, if you are 
in the condition of those of whom Saint Paul says, 
" All things work together for good," and to 
whom he says, " All things are yours, — whether 
life or death, or things present or things to come, 
all are yours." All may be yours, even those 
things that seem least to be coveted, — yours in the 
sense, not of infliction or endurance, but of use 
and beneficial interest ; for there is a divine 
alchemy which transmutes what are regarded as 
the most malign elements of human experience 
into means of spiritual growth, extracts gain from 
loss, distils joy from tears. 

You are about to enter into the cloud. What 
for you lies under it ? At best, much of the un- 
known, the unexperienced, the as yet unimagined, 
which for that very reason may make you fear 
that it " may be uncongenial to you, or that you 
may fail of meeting it as it ought to be met, — of 
conforming yourselves to what it demands of you 
if you would profit by it. 

You may encounter death beneath the cloud. 
Seldom has an unstarred class appeared on our 
Triennial Catalogue. The final summons comes, 



236 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



not so often to those who are waiting and listening 
for it as to those who least expect it. I know that 
it is not uncommon to speak contemptuously of 
the fear of death, as characteristic of feeble souls. 
I cannot so regard it ; and I apprehend that with 
many who profess not to fear death, it is its 
imagined remoteness that disarms it of its terror. 
The question for such an one is, Did you know 
that this were your last day, or week, or month, 
or year, would the knowledge disturb your seren- 
ity ? I cannot conceive of him as fearless, who is 
consciously going to meet death under the cloud, 
without seeing through it, or knowing with a good 
degree of assurance whether there is any thing, 
and what there is, beyond it. We began to be ; 
why may we not utterly cease to be ? There is 
wretchedness in this world ; how know we that 
we may not encounter it if we live on elsewhere ? 
There is no earth-born philosophy that can inter- 
pret the past and the present of humanity, still 
less its future. Death, then, with uncertainties 
and mysteries which you have no earthly means 
of solving, is among the not unfit objects of fear as 
you enter into the cloud. 

But for most of you, if not a long, a somewhat 
lengthened life in this world is in reserve. For 
most of you, too, there will be a large preponder- 
ance of happiness. Did you ever think of the 
meaning of our word happiness ? It is an uncon- 
scious testimony, imbedded in language — which 



THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 237 



often contains more truth than those who use -it 
know — to the beneficent providence of God. It 
means that which happens, and it implies that the 
normal happenings to man are pleasure-giving, 
joy-giving. 

Yet it can hardly be but that for some of you 
— God only knows for whom — sore calamities, 
bitter disappointments, severe bereavements, lie 
under the cloud, it may be, near at hand. Thus 
have we always seen it, — trials and sorrows so 
often falling where they are least looked for, that 
one ought not to enter on a new stage, even of 
early life, without recognizing his liability to the 
common lot, and feeling that whatever he most 
rejoices in on earth is his by so frail a tenure, that 
he should hold himself ready to yield it up at any 
moment. 

But if your outward life be prosperous, with no 
early abatements or drawbacks, as will doubtless be 
the case with most of you, a yet deeper cloud may 
rest on what will be called your unclouded happi- 
ness. How character will bear continuous pros- 
perity cannot be foreseen. For not a few, life is 
made worthless by the affluence of its so-called 
good things. The inner man so feeds on the ma- 
terials of outward well-being, so digests them, so 
assimilates them, that it becomes itself of the same 
staple and substance with them, and loses its hold 
on those divine and spiritual realities which are its 
better, its only true life. The psalmist's words, 



238 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



" Because they have no changes, therefore they fear 
not God," describe this condition, in which pros- 
perity obstructs the soul's growth, and stimu- 
lates the lower faculties that find their scope and 
their joy in outward good. This grovelling expe- 
rience is depicted by one of the prophets in a bold 
metaphor, — "Moab hath been at ease from his 
youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not 
been emptied from vessel to vessel ; therefore his 
taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed," 
that is, his very ease, quietness, prosperity is the 
reason why he has grown no better. This you 
have reason to fear as you enter into the cloud, — 
a fear which may well chasten your hopes, as its 
tendency to realization is contingent on their realiz- 
ation. Nay, could you have the true springs of 
your well-being laid open to your clear view, I 
am not certain but that you might see cause for 
most dreading what you most desire ; for if with 
smooth sea and genial breezes you are going 
to drop your oars, and yield passively to the cur- 
rents and eddies on your life-voyage, you might bid 
a solemn welcome to high waves and adverse 
winds, which would task your strength and skill, 
and keep you alert and active. 

Among the things which, were you wise, you 
would fear as you enter into the cloud, would be 
over-sudden success, over-rapid prosperity ; for such 
experiences have with sad frequency been accom- 
panied by changes for the worse in heart, soul, and 



THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 239 

life. The prophet wept when he told gentle, in- 
genuous, innocent Hazael of the enormities of 
which he would soon be guilty, and as to which 
Hazael exclaimed in indignant incredulity, 44 Is thy 
servant a dog, that he should do thus ? " But the 
future was fully interpreted when the prophet 
added, 44 Thou shalt be king over Syria." All 
along the ages, and under our own eyes, Hazael's 
has been a typical character. Sometimes, indeed, 
we are gladdened by its opposite ; but oftener, the 
sudden glare and glitter are too much for frail hu- 
manity. So far, then, as there are for any of you 
what might be styled magnificent expectations, the 
foreshinings of an especially enviable condition in 
life, there is fully equal reason to fear for you as 
you enter into the cloud. 

Still farther, you have reason to fear lest your 
characters remain stationary, as they assuredly will, 
at the best, without moral activity and enterprise 
on your part, without self-knowledge,. self-chasten- 
ing, self-discipline. Even a good character needs 
growth in order to remain good ; for it has its faults, 
which, in the absence of spiritual self-culture, be- 
come indurated, while its virtues lose their fresh- 
ness and fervor, grow mechanical and automatic, 
do less and less of heart-work and more and more 
ot mere task-work. The elements of character 
must be in fruitful activity and in perpetual growth, 
that one may morally and spiritually hold his own. 
The talent wrapped in a napkin or buried in the 



240 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



ground, even though it be a talent of pure gold, 
loses its lustre, and makes but a sorry show be- 
side those that have been kept bright and have 
been multiplied by faithful use. 

You have, then, all of you, reason to fear as 
you enter into the cloud. 

But the last office that I would fill on an occa- 
sion on which I warmly sympathize with all that 
it has of gladness and hopefulness, is that of a pro- 
phet of evil. I would bid you fear, only that I may 
show you how you can enter into the cloud without 
fear. There comes to you, as to the apostles, a re- 
assuring voice out of the cloud, " This is my be- 
loved Son, hear Him " ; and if you will but hear 
Him, there is no fear for you. 

Retrace with me the grounds of fear over which 
I have led you, and see how entirely their aspect 
is transfigured by him to whose words of duty, of 
the divine love, and of the life eternal, we are thus 
bidden to listen. 

On our way back to our starting point we find 
first (for we passed it last), the fear of a stationary 
character, which is but another name for moral 
stagnation and imbecility. But what says Jesus ? 
" Follow thou me," — a command which gives the 
soul only the rest that there is in rhythmical move- 
ment, the peace that there is in balanced and har- 
monized activities. If you hear him, onward and 
upward endeavor will be your constant law. The 
perfect beauty and loveliness that are in him will 



THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 



241 



allow you no pause, so long as there is a grace: in 
him of which you have not the growing likeness, — 
so long as there is a spot or blemish in you, however 
venial to human eyes, which makes, or keeps you 
in any feature or aspect unlike him. In every de- 
partment of secular and intellectual life you own 
the power of great models ; you feel no ambition 
where they are wanting.* Nor would you be con- 
tent with a model which you could easily reach and 
transcend. Probably, because of its very lowness 
and easiness of attainment you would never put 
forth the energy needed to reach it. But an ex- 
ample which taxes your powers continuously, which 
grows upon you as you approach it, and keeps con- 
stantly in advance of you when it seems almost 
within your reach, claims and rewards your con- 
stant and* enthusiastic effort. On the career of 
taoral excellence you have one, and but one, such 
example in the Divine humanity of Jesus Christ, 
and his voice, if you hear it, will suffer you to seek 
no repose, save that of even and uninterrupted 
progress toward and in him, the Way, the Truth, 
and the Life. 

Nor, if you hear him, need you fear success 
and prosperity ; for you will learn of him, and he 
will make you feel, that you are but responsible 
stewards of whatever God gives you, — that your 
well-being is contingent, not on the having, but on 
the using. Stewards you are, not for yourselves 
alone, but for an ever enlarging circle through 



242 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



which your growing influence shall make itself 
beneficently felt. Let me beg you to be not un- 
mindful of the exceptional largeness of your stew- 
ardship, as those who have inherited for their 
culture the benefactions of preceding centuries,— 
of endowments founded in the self-denial of ourj 
fathers when they were poor, and feeble, and 
strangers in the land, enriched by the pious fore- 
thought of successive generations, hallowed by the 
earnest prayer of unnumbered faithful souls, dedi- 
cated in singleness of purpose to Christ and the 
Church, and bestowed only that Christ should 
never lack disciples here, or the Church lack 
pillars here shaped, rounded, polished, and adorned, 
from base to capital, in the beauty of holiness. 
Leading minds yours must be by virtue of your 
superior means of culture. On you rests the 
responsibility that they lead where they can be 
followed to the enduring good of those among 
whom your lot shall be cast. If there shall open 
for your early years only bright vistas as you 
move on under the cloud ; if your best hopes shall 
be realized, your worthy ambition crowned with 
full success, — how redolent should be each succes- 
sive year of gratitude to God, of the thoughts of 
peace which flow with his gifts into the heart not 
closed against his Spirit, and of that generous, 
diffusive love, which mounts first to heaven, and, 
refluent thence, comprehends within its luminous 
sphere all that it can comfort, counsel, guide and 
bless ! 



THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 



243 



Nor, if you hear him whom you are bidden to 
hear, need }^ou fear sudden and great prosperity 
beyond your hope ; for it will be to you only 
an enlarged stewardship, augmented opportunity 
of usefulness, added reason for the self-exhorta- 
tion, " Bless the Lord, O my soul, and let all that 
is within me bless his holy name." 

You do intensely need to hear him in your 
young, and bright, and happy days ; for then are 
your strongest temptations, your most arduous 
perils. If nothing worse, you are in imminent 
danger of building character, happiness, hope, on 
those frail foundations which are at the risk of 
every vicissitude, which are more likely than not 
to fail you sooner than this earthly life shall cease, 
and which can by no possibility outlast it. Yet in 
all the prosperity which God may send, he seeks 
to bestow himself with his gifts, he invites your 
glowing thankfulness and fervent love, and multi- 
plies for you materials with which, in duty and 
usefulness, in the loyal service of }~our Father and 
and his children, you may build on the foundation 
which time and change and death cannot under- 
mine, and on which the edifice thus built shall be 
your heavenly and eternal dwelling-place. 

But for some of you, with almost absolute cer- 
tainty, there lie near, beneath the cloud, disap- 
pointments, calamities, sad partings, it may be, 
from those dear to you as your own lives. Hear 
him, then, the Man of Sorrows, as on the mount 



244 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



of transfiguration he stands in celestial radiance. 
Of what spake they, — he and the sublime old 
prophets that were with him ? " Gf the decease 
which he should accomplish at Jerusalem," — of 
the crown of thorns, the insults, mocking and 
scourge, the cross of shame and ignominy. These 
were transfigured with and in him, — the wound- 
marks, glory-marks ; the jeers, hosamias ; the 
emblem of lowest infamy, the symbol of all that is 
most grand and blessed in humanity. By him 
and with him shall your trials and griefs be trans- 
figured. His Father's perfect providence and 
almighty love shall make them but his kindly dis- 
cipline for the heirs of his salvation. Are there 
before any of you earthly losses ? Faith in Christ 
shall make them your heavenly and everlasting 
gains. Are there appointed for any of you be- 
reavements that shall seem to maim and cripple, 
beyond restoration, the transient, dying life you 
lead here ? Through him the two worlds are 
made one world ; those divided between earth and 
heaven, one household. In him the dead live, and 
through him shall they be yours again, unchanged 
in love, — yours where they die no more, where 
death itself shall die. 

For some of you, for some who least think it, 
the cloud into which you enter may deepen into 
the shadow of death. It is in vain that you ask, 
" Lord, is it I ? Is it I ? " The only answer is, 
" Be thou ready ; for in an hour when thou think- 



THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE. 



245 



est not the Son of man cometh." Hear him, and 
you need not fear as you enter into the cloud, 
though it be dripping for you with the dews of 
death. For hath not he abolished death? Are 
not his words uttered for all time, — " He that be- 
lieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, 
shall never die " ? You can see through what we 
call death, only as he has transfigured it, — only by 
the light that streams from his broken sepulchre. 
Philosophy leaves you in doubt, now with a glim- 
mering of hope, now in utter despondency. Earthly 
analogies point either way, according as you are 
in clear sunlight, or overshadowed by apprehension, 
sorrow or gloom. Would to heaven that you 
might so see through the cloud the inevitable 
future, that there should rise from each of your 
hearts the earnest appeal to him who alone leads 
to heaven the long procession of the dying, " Lord, 
to whom shall I go ? Thou, Jesus, hast the words 
of eternal life, and thee will I hear. I will take 
thy resurrection as the foreshining of my own. 
Thee I must follow, sooner or later, through the 
death-shadow. Be it mine to hearken to thee 
now, to follow thee step by step till the shadow 
gathers over me, and then I know that the dark- 
ness shall be light about me. I will fear no evil, if 
thou be with me. Thy rod and thy staff shall 
guide me, and when I wake from the death-slum- 
ber, I shall be still with thee." 



246 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



My friends, I have spoken as I have to-day 
because I feel profoundly, and more and more so 
with my long and varied observation and experi- 
ence, that religious faith and purpose are the only 
certain safeguards against the growing perils of 
life. So far as there has been among educated 
men a decline of loyalty to Christ and his Gospel, 
there has been a decline in those qualities which 
claim confidence and honor, which ensure unblem- 
ished reputation, which minister to social well- 
being and to the integrity and purity of public 
life. A non-Christian culture has utterly failed to 
justify itself in its nurslings. The names on our 
Catalogue which will go down to posterity with 
enduring lustre are, for the most part, such as 
have been inscribed in imperishable record among 
the servants of God and the followers of Christ. 
There, above all, I would have your names regis- 
tered. The time will come when all other distinc- 
tions will seem to you of no significance ; when 
you will need memory to hold the torch to an un- 
dying hope ; when the remembrance of a life 
hallowed by the love of God, by the faith of 
Christ, and by the unselfish service of those for 
whom he lived and died and ever lives, will be to 
you light, and peace, and unspeakable joy. As 
you enter into the cloud, may you hear the voice 
that comes out of the cloud ! It is ' the best part- 
ing wish that I can utter, the best parting prayer 
that I can offer for you. 



XVII. 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 

(1880). 

" This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our 
faith."— 1 John v. 4. 

We must overcome the world, or the world will 
overcome us ; and faith in that which is not of the 
world, in that which is greater, higher, better, 
alone can give us the victory. 

My friends of the graduating class, you are go- 
ing on your several ways, into a closer conflict with 
the world's adverse influences than you have yet 
waged, and you need, to protect you from harm, 
" the shield of faith." I use this apostolic figure, 
because faith is pre-eminently a shield. Things 
are to you what you believe them to be, and if you 
sincerely believe in a realm of being superior to 
the outward world, and in a life that transcends 
and will outlast your bodily life, your faith makes 
you a citizen of that realm, a partaker of that life, 
and therefore places you above and beyond the 
power of hostile forces in the lower sphere. For 
this reason, I crave for you, more than all things 
else, faith in the spiritual world and life, and in 



248 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



Him whom I cannot but regard as the one authen- 
tic Revealer of that world and Herald of that life. 

I apprehend that there is in many minds an 
impression that the recent progress and present 
aspects of what is commonly called natural science 
are inimical to spiritual faith, and have rudely 
shaken, perhaps entirely undermined, its founda- 
tions. There is much less ground for this appre- 
hension than is commonly supposed. The few 
agnostics who have distinguished themselves in 
the advanced science of our time are conspicuous 
rather as exceptions than as specimens of their class. 
Among the foremost names in natural science, the 
greater part are, I think, those of sincere theistic 
and Christian believers. You may search Darwin's 
books in vain for a single irreverent utterance, 
while his recognition of the being and providence 
of the supreme Creator is neither infrequent nor 
ambiguous. In our own University, the world-re- 
nowned naturalist, who has from the first borne equal 
pace with Darwin, and has elaborated concurrently 
with him rather than received from him the theo- 
ries that bear his name, deems it his highest 
blessedness that he is a disciple of Jesus Christ, 
and regards his philosophy as in part confirma- 
tory, and in no part or way subversive, of even 
the most orthodox type of Christianity. 

I am not going to present myself as either an 
advocate or an opponent of these or of any scientific 
theories. They are out of my sphere. I am not 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 



249 



qualified to expound or criticise them. Were I 
to undertake the task, I should fall as far below 
your scientific teachers, as they would fall below 
me were they to enter on the critical exposition of 
the New Testament. Nor have I any hostility to 
the theories that have taken so strong a hold on 
the scientific mind. Indeed, I have no doubt that 
they are all that is claimed for them by their most 
authentic expositors, — valuable working hypo- 
theses, not unlikely to be progressively verified by 
more extended observation and research. I could 
admit them in full without having my faith in re- 
ligious and Christian verities in the least disturbed ; 
and I want to show you that they leave these 
verities and their evidence unimpaired, and un- 
affected except at points where they postulate the 
truths of religion, and add solidity to the ground 
on which those truths rest. If I can make this 
clear, I am sure that I shall have rendered to some 
of you a parting service which may be of substan- 
tial and enduring value. 

I would first speak of what has been not inaptly 
called the physico-chemical theory of mental action, 
according to which all mental phenomena are re- 
ducible to physical laws, and are as necessary and 
inevitable as the working of similar laws in the out- 
ward world. Thus, given the brain and the en- 
vironments of Nero and of Marcus Aurelius, it was 
impossible that the one should not have been a 
fiend incarnate, that the other should not have 



250 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



been little less than a saint. Now, if we admit — 
and I am not disposed to doubt — that the brain 
and the nervous system constitute the medium of 
mental action, so that there is not a thought or 
feeling which is not contingent on a distinct physi- 
cal process, still there is one salient fact for which 
this theory fails to account, — the fact of moral 
approbation and disapproval. The theory may be 
true ; but if it be the whole truth as to mental 
action, then Nero is no more to be blamed than 
Vesuvius ; Marcus Aurelius, no more to be praised 
than sunshine or a timely shower. Yet, believe 
what you will, you cannot get rid of the feelings 
associated with what are commonly called merit 
and demerit. There is no indignation against 
Vesuvius. The Neapolitans love it, are proud of 
it, and when its fiery streams have overwhelmed 
their hamlets, they return, as soon as it cools, to 
nestle again under its shadow. Did they feel thus 
toward their last Bourbon tyrant, who, indeed, did 
them mischief to the utmost of his ability, but who 
could work less harm in a twelvemonth than 
Vesuvius in the twinkling of an eye ? 

Punishment means more than prevention. 
Prisons and lightning-rods belong not to the same 
category, and yet, according to the theory under 
discussion, their purpose is identical. But from 
punishment we cannot eliminate the element of 
blame. Nor yet can this element come from the 
fact that human beings, though not able to do 



SCIENCE AND BELIGION. 



251 



otherwise, know what they do, and think they 
mean it. The more intelligent beasts know the 
mischief that they do, mean it, plan it, and mani- 
fest anger and spite in doing it ; yet what sane 
man blames them ? 

Nor can the sentiment of approbation or its 
opposite be the result of transmitted and accumu- 
lated experience of the beneficent effects of what 
we approve and the injurious consequences of 
what we censure. For, in the first place, we 
praise or blame traits of character that have no 
direct or appreciable consequences in the outward 
world, and we especially admire whatever unveil- 
ings there may be of those modest graces that 
seldom see the light ; and, secondly, mankind has 
had as long experience of harm from nature and 
from the lower animals as from man, and has been 
indefatigable in the devising of defences and pre- 
cautions against such injury, yet without resent- 
ment, or any feeling corresponding to the sense of 
wrong that ensues upon human ill-doing. 

Still further, we are ourselves distinctly con- 
scious of good or ill desert. This consciousness, I 
have no doubt, is in part a physical phenomenon. 
My brain bears an essential part in telling me that 
I do well or ill ; but it tells me, and as I receive 
the report, I am distinctly aware that — while if 
the reporter were my entire conscious self, the re- 
port would be a fiction — there is in and of me 
a larger and more comprehensive selfhood of 



252 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



which, it is true. I have a distinct sense, not only 
of the quality of my actions as good or bad, but of 
myself as having the same quality : and this 
quality eludes all physical definition and analysis ; 
it submits itself to no physical test, and belongs to 
that sphere of being which, because it is not 
material, has been termed, by common consent, 
spiritual. 

The reality of this spiritual element as a work- 
ing force in our world is brought into strong relief 
by another scientific theory, the growth of our own 
time, namely, the convertibility and conservation 
of force. It is admitted that there is no creation 
or increase of energy in the material universe : the 
only question is whether there is not a gradual 
dissipation of it. Certainly, of physical force there 
is no more in the world than there was two thous- 
and years ago. Yet has there not been a vast in- 
crease of human power in every direction in which 
it can act ? Where lies this increase ? Not in 
physical instrumentalities or their products. You 
might sweep the world clear of all that art, skill, 
and tilth have constructed and wrought upon its 
surface, and the work of these thousands of years 
would be more than replaced in a single century, 
by a force which does not reside in outward 
nature,-— a force which has been gathering volume 
and momentum from the day when man first 
began to subdue the earth to his will, and which 
has been treasured and transmitted, — not in ma- 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 



253 



terial organisms ; for were they its receptacle and 
medium, they must have beggared and paralyzed 
for its increase all other material forces, which yet 
have suffered no perceptible diminution with the 
myriad-fold growth of what we call mind-power, 
soul-power. 

Moreover, a preponderant portion of this mind- 
power is moral power, — the outgrowth of that 
sense of merit and demerit, approval and dis- 
approval, which, as we have seen, cannot be 
accounted for by the material organism. Who 
can estimate the accession of power which has 
accrued to mankind through Christianity, — a pow- 
er of which Christian nations are the depository, 
and the elect among Christian souls the full- 
charged and perpetually distributing reservoirs? 
The world has been constantly growing richer in 
the elements of power, and foremost among these 
elements are great examples, controlling influences, 
noble sentiments, agencies entirely divorced from 
material mechanism. 

Nor can it be that the brain itself has acquired 
a stronger or a finer staple, or a more thorough 
and efficient organism. In this regard the ancient 
civilizations, with their perfect systems of physical 
education, must have had greatly the advantage of 
ours. The Greeks have left us brain-work which 
subsequent ages have emulated, but never equalled, 
and which only the chosen few can now appreciate 
as it was appreciated even by the populace of 



254 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



Athens. Nor was it by arms alone, but still more 
by brain-power, that Rome gave law to the world. 
It has been with brains of much coarser fabric than 
those of Plato and Epicurus, Cicero and Virgil, but 
with a power which the old world knew not, ema- 
nating from the life and spirit of Him who made 
humanity divine, that men in these Christian ages, 
as reformers, philanthropists, champions of truth 
and right, have given their names to their times 
and their unspent soul-power to all coming time. 
There is, then, a force, which obeys not the mate^ 
rial law of the conservation of energy, which has 
grown from age to age, and was never so potent as 
now; and this force, because it is independent of 
laws which bear undisputed sway throughout the 
physical universe, we fitly term spiritual. 

I pass now to the evolution-theory. It is too 
early to predict its future with certainty. On the 
one hand, there are strong probabilities in its favor ; 
on the other hand, it is not proved. It may follow 
the fortune of the hypotheses that have been crown- 
ed by one generation, deposed by the next ; or it 
may be found so to harmonize all the vestiges of 
antecedent and the phenomena of existing organ- 
isms as to command permanently the suffrages of 
the whole scientific world. We will suppose it es- 
tablished beyond a question. So far from casting 
doubt upon religious verities, in its every aspect it 
leads us up to God. 

Evolution implies, with its ascending scale of 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 



255 



types, an archetype toward which the series tends; 
else it is impossible to recognize a series, or to trace 
an orderly development. It comprehends succes- 
sive stages of progress, from lower to higher forms, 
in a uniform direction. The stone, the earth-clod, 
unorganized matter, is at the foot of the scale. It 
has no individuality, no power to change its condi- 
tion, no functional agency, no capacity of action, 
no faculty. It is, nothing more. From this as we 
ascend through the lower to the higher grades of 
vegetable organism, we find that what distinguishes 
the later and higher from the earlier and lower is 
superior faculty, and by faculty I mean the power 
of utilizing and of being utilized, — that of simulat- 
ing, and approximating to, conscious relations with 
the surrounding universe. So far does this power 
extend in the more advanced members of the series, 
that poetry hardly exceeds the spontaneous imagin- 
ings of those most conversant with nature, when it 
ascribes to plants human passions and affections; 
and, on a glorious summer morning, the heart that 
throbs with praise and worship finds a truth far 
transcending prosaic fact in the strophe of the 
Hebrew psalm, " Then shall all the trees of the 
wood rejoice before the Lord." As we rise, step 
by step, from the zoophites on the confines of the 
two realms to the higher orders of the animal king- 
dom, the successive grades are betokened by supe- 
rior faculty, and not by more complex organisation ; 
for this, could it not both utilize and be utilized, 



256 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



would be mere surplusage, and not even organism. 
An organ is an instrument ; and it is not the num- 
ber or the structure of its parts, but the faculty that 
resides in them, that makes one organization supe- 
rior to another. This faculty ranges in animals 
from merely automatic movement to voluntary and 
intelligent action, and along with each higher grade 
of intelligence we find corresponding physical 
tokens of a more advanced development. In man, 
so far as we can see, the series culminates in a 
conscious selfhood, mental and moral, — in a faculty 
which embraces or supersedes all lower faculties. 
Indeed, as we pass from the speck of mould up to 
man, we find that at each ascendant stage there is 
precisely this absorbing or superseding of such 
powers as belong to the next lower grade. Each 
grade thus comprehends all the lower, and gives 
presage of the higher. This is claimed to be true 
as to structural development ; it is manifestly no 
less so as to the development of faculty. It is 
man's prerogative that he — and, we have reason to 
believe, of earthly beings he alone — is conscious of 
capacities not directly growing out of, or wholly 
contingent upon, his material organism and sur- 
roundings. Yet it is toward this higher condition 
that all the lower tend. The modicum of faculty 
possessed by the humblest plant or the lowest 
zoophyte seems the germ of human faculty, into 
which, if naturally developed, it could not fail to 
grow. 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 



257 



But this type toward which all being tends 
postulates an archetype ; and if the series culmi- 
nates in that which is supra-material, and the being 
at the summit of the series transcends the lower 
members precisely by the distinct development of 
the supra-material element, must not the archetype 
also be supra-material ? If the archetype were ma- 
terial, the summit of the series would be a perfect 
animal, which man is not, and never can be. Nor 
yet is he a perfect soul ; but he is conscious of per- 
fectibility, — he can conceive of himself as possessed 
in full of all the characteristics, not of material, but 
supra-material, moral, spiritual perfection. Must 
not, then, that perfection exist as an archetype, of 
which the ascending grades of faculty are sucessive 
types ? Does the series aspire toward nothingness, 
and approach inanity at every stage ; or is there 
at its unseen summit Infinite Perfection, evolving 
in long succession an ever nearer approach to Itself 
in Its own sentient universe ? To this question, 
sound philosophy and religious faith give the same 
answer. 

Still further, as each inferior type fulfills its 
manifest destiny, can we conceive that man alone 
falls immeasurably short of his ? Or, rather, must 
there not be for him a lengthened, an infinite 
career, throughout which he may perpetually 
approach the goal toward which he aspires and 
tends ? I cannot imagine to myself this series cut 
short at the very point at which it abuts on in- 



258 BACCALATJBEATE SERMONS. 



unity, — this mounting, struggling, panting life of 
the soul arrested just when it begins to know its 
own unlimited capacities. The series in its step- 
wise ascent points on and up, beyond the vision of 
the sensual orb to regions where faith is sight, to 
the All-Perfect Archetype whose image we bear, 
to the eternal life in the bosom of the All-Father, 
— a life that shall partake ever more fully of His, 
and still, the more it has, shall crave the more. 
Indeed, the law of evolution points to the twin 
developments, of ever higher perfection in the suc- 
cessive eras of human life on earth, and of ever 
larger powers and nobler attributes for the in- 
dividual soul beyond the death-shadow. 

To pass to another view of evolution, — does it 
look like chance-work ? The argument from design 
has been abused by those who have employed it, 
and, because of its abuse, has been vilified. When 
urged with reference to details, a double interpre- 
tation is always possible. Objects that seem adapted 
to one another may have been created with refer- 
ence to one another, or by continuous juxtaposition 
may have grown into mutual adaptation. But or- 
derly evolution from brute matter ; myriads of 
worlds, each with its differing glory, globing them- 
selves in symmetry and in harmonious relations, 
from homogeneous star-mist; organic, vegetable, 
animal, human life rising by successive gradations 
from formless patches of protoplasm, — can all this 
have been the dice-work of mindless chaos, the 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 



259 



outcome of atoms swirling aimlessly in infinite 
space ? Bear it in mind that nothing can have 
been developed that was not contained in that 
from which it was evolved; that every film of star- 
mist, every speck of protoplasm, must have had 
within itself the germs of all that it has become. 
This is possible in the design of omnipotent wisdom ; 
but did I accept this theory in its full import, so 
far from banishing God from my conception of the 
universe, it would only fill me with a more over- 
whelming sense of His infinity, and would call forth 
only the more fervent ascription, " Great and 
marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty ! " 

Nor does this theory make Him any the less the 
present, the ever-present God. If an initial purpose 
launched the as yet formless universe into being, 
with its multiform capacity of becoming all that 
it is or ever will be, time is but a category of finite 
being. In the Infinite Mind there can be no dis- 
tinction of past, present, and future. He is from 
eternity to eternity, and in every stage of develop- 
ment He is no less present than were each stage 
a fresh creation. Nay, it is a fresh creation ; for 
the Omnipotent Will must be incessant, eternal, 
else not omnipotent. He is no less the Immanent 
Cause than the First Cause. The universe sub- 
sists, the vast design unrolls, by His unceasing fiat. 
Let that fiat be for one instant witholden, the 
universe vanishes like the shadow of a dream. Law 
is but a provisional fiction of philosophy, — thenon- 



260 BACCALAUBEATE SEBMONS. 



religious name for the modes of administration of 
an orderly universe. Law has a real meaning only 
for conscious law-keepers, — for men and angels, not 
for suns and stars and oceans, — for intelligent 
causes, not for unintelligent effects. There is no 
power of obedience in the inanimate objects to 
which we apply that term. Cut them adrift from 
the infinite, unceasing Will-Power which holds 
them in their places and their courses, — there would 
remain for them no law but inertia, which would 
either arrest them in eternal stillness, or hurl them 
into internecine chaos. 

It may not unfitly be asked, What place does 
the evolution-theory leave for Christianity ? I 
answer, It not only leaves, but postulates, a place 
for precisely what we Christians believe and claim. 
It gives us the largest view of the divine omnipo- 
tence, to which all things needful and desirable are 
possible. It presents, not fragmentary and question- 
able instances of design, but a design embracing all 
worlds and beings, which can leave no portion of the 
infinite plan unachieved, no development incom- 
plets. It shows us man at the summit of the series, 
with supra-material powers, tendencies, aspirations. 
The Infinite Providence has supplied the needs, 
filled out the capacities, rounded the destiny of all 
orders of being up to man. That they could avail 
themselves of more than has been given them, we 
have no token. But if man has an exceptional 
capacity, why should we suppose that uncaredfor ? 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 



261 



If man is capable of rising toward the Supreme 
Archetype, what more probable than that this 
Archetype should have been placed before him, so 
far as its attributes could be incarnated in a human 
form, and under such conditions as to become a 
central object of reverence, love, and imitation for 
all coming ages ? Moreover, if the law of develop- 
ment pervades all organized being, should we not 
expect that it would equally pervade the history of 
man ? If so, then the Divine Humanity would not 
have had its place at the threshold of man's being 
upon the earth, but would have awaited the ful- 
ness of time, and have been preceded andprepared 
for by such prophets as have left their record in 
the Hebrew literature, — by such sages and philoso- 
phers as equally shed the forecast rays of the com- 
ing day on Greece, on India, on Persia, and, it may 
be, with feebler light on many other lands and 
races. 

Science does not, indeed, prove Christianity; 
yet it more than leaves its area uninvaded. Its 
latest utterances crave for man, the exceptional 
head of the series, precisely what Christianity sup- 
plies by ministering to his conscious capacities and 
needs, by ensuring to him a destiny adequate to 
his aspirations. Christianity relies on evidence 
entirely outside of the sphere of natural science. 
As to its external and historical proof, suffice it to 
say that, after passing through the severest cri- 
ticism, it never rested, in the minds of such believ- 



262 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



ers as have carried the strongest lights of reason 
and learning over the whole field, on so firm and 
impregnable ground as now. But it is its own best 
evidence. Those best know it to be divine, who 
have tested it by their prolonged and profound ex- 
perience, who have sought in it a guidance that 
has never misled them, a consolation that has never 
failed them, a strength that has been made perfect 
in their weakness, a hope that has grown clearer 
and brighter as the shadows have gathered over 
their westward way and their declining years. 

Here I cannot but ask you to consider the place 
which Christianity holds in the history of human 
thought. It is the only permanent phasis of belief 
or speculation that has come down to us from its 
birth-time. Behold the long procession of theories 
and philosophies, each paraded as humanity's last 
word and ultimate, irreversible truth, which have 
chased one another into oblivion, sometimes reap- 
pearing from the Lethean stream, only to be again 
submerged ; while this one religion, this one theory 
of God, the soul, and eternity, this one philosophy, 
deemed by its believers divine, has remained un- 
dimmed, unchanged, unmoved, like the sun among 
flitting clouds, like the cliff on the margin of the 
river, like the bow over the rushing waterfall. To 
whom, then, will you go ? Jesus, and He alone, 
has the words of eternal life, and we believe and 
are sure that He is the Son of the Living God. 

My friends, I have assumed, as to natural 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 



263 



science, the position which is likely for the present 
to be maintained by those who, in their own depart- 
ment, have the best right to speak with authority. 
I find that between this position and that which was 
currently held when I v\ as of your age, there is no 
sensible parallax in my view of the objects of my 
religious and Christian faith and reference. In 
science, you will not take opinions on mere hearsay 
evidence, but will seek to know the reasons for your 
beliefs. On the immeasurably more momentous 
subjects connected with your own being, duty, and 
destiny, let me beg you not to fall without reflec- 
tion into any current of sceptical thought, but to 
give full scope to the claims of religion and Chris- 
tianity on your serious, earnest and profoundly in- 
terested inquiry. Take counsel of your higher 
nature, of your moral, spiritual needs, of your con- 
dition as those whose longest lease of life will seem, 
as your years roll on, oh ! you know not how brief 
and transient, of those yearnings for immortality 
which well up in your hearts only because there is 
an Infinite Fountain that can fill them. God grant 
you the best of this world that can be yours, and 
heaven still be yours ! May He be your Guide on 
the unknown ways which lie before you ; and, 
while this may be your last meeting on earth in 
undiminished numbers, may there be an unbroken 
class-meeting where there is no parting, when the 
star shall have been entered on the catalogue for 
your last solitary survivor ! 



XVIII. 



CHRISTO ET ECCLESIAE. 

(1881.) 

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever" 
— Hebrews xiii. 8. 

For you, my friends of the graduating class, 
and still more for me, at the close of my long 
term of official service here, this is a season of re- 
trospection ; and while my personal conversance 
with the University covers little more than one- 
flfth of its life-time, I probably have witnessed 
wider departures from its first estate than had 
taken place in the two preceding centuries. If 
the eye is indeed an inlet to the mind, we ought 
to be kept in perpetual remembrance of the prime 
purpose and aim had in view in the establishment 
of the College. Christo et Ecclesiae (To 
Christ and the Church), emblazoned in these win- 
dows, is stamped on every college-document, will 
hold a conspicuous place on the parchment of 
your diplomas, and will be adopted by your class- 
committee in printing your valedictory oration 
and poem. This was not, indeed, the first seal. 
Veritas (Truth) was the original motto ; but 



CHEISTO ET ECCLESIAE. 



265 



how entirely truth was conceived of as identified 
with him who alone could say, " I am the truth," 
appears from the very early substitution for 
Veritas of In Christi Gloriam (To the glory 
of Christ), and,* shortly afterward, of the present 
form. Extant records show that from the earliest 
times there were not infrequent deflections from 
the strictness of religious rule and principle, and 
in the course of the last century occurred scenes 
and seasons of irrepressible disorder and misdoing, 
which have had no parallel within the memory of 
living man ; but until the accession of President 
Quincy the College retained much of its ecclesias- 
tical character. The President was chief priest as 
well as chief ruler ; the principal clerical functions 
connected with the College devolved on him ; the 
professors and tutors officiated in turn at the daily 
devotional services ; and the students were held 
more rigidly to the outside forms of religious 
observance than even to the regulations — by no 
means unexacting — of the college-police. At the 
same time, the Divinity School took the unques- 
tioned primacy among the graduate departments, 
and a -very large proportion — seldom less than one- 
fourth — of each year's graduates became clergy- 
men. For the last half-century in many respects 
there has grown up a very different order of 
things, and the College certainly no longer bears 
on its face the motto inscribed on its shield. The 
change, whether desirable or not, was inevitable. 



266 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



There has been a like change in the surrounding 
community, and — what it is of especial conse- 
quence to observe — in the actual religious life of 
the community. Yet I do not believe that, view- 
ed in all its aspects collectively, there has been in 
New England a decline in religious faith or 
character. I am painfully aware that there is an 
increased number of persons of high position 
and blameless life who openly take their stand 
outside of the churches and of religious organ- 
isms ; but I doubt whether they exceed the 
number of those of equal strength of mind, 
though of inferior aesthetic culture, who half a 
century ago either covered their unbelief to 
escape social ostracism, or wooed such ostracism 
by the coarse and scurrilous profession of in- 
fidelity. While certain classes of advanced think- 
ers (as they are often called ; may they not be re- 
trograde ?) see one another through multiplying- 
glasses, and make much parade of their honest and 
sanguine, yet delusive estimates, the* ranks of 
sincere and earnest Christians are not perceptibly 
thinned. While there is much less than there was 
— much less in some respects than I wish that 
there were — of the outward form of godliness, 
there never was so much as now of faithful 
Christian work — meant, too, to be Christian work 
— for the relief of human want, suffering, ignor- 
ance, and sin ; and a great deal of the genuine 
religious principle and feeling which used to find 



CHRISTO ET ECCLESIAE. 



267 



vent chiefly in set phrase, in social worship, and in 
uttered exhortation or prayer, is now more Christ- 
likely embodied in active philanthropy. In our 
College, too, while I lament the sad indifference of 
many to the truths and sanctities of religion, I 
cannot say that the former times were better than 
the present. The secret societies of my time in 
college were the religious societies, and their mem- 
bers might have been counted on the fingers, 
sometimes of one hand. Those societies are now 
recognized and honored institutions, with a large 
membership, and comprising their full proportion 
of those foremost in scholarship and social position, 
as in character. On the other hand, the influences 
adverse to Christianity, though more conspicuous, 
are, it seems to me, fraught with less peril than 
the stealthy propagandism that used to be attempt- 
ed by the circulation of books and pamphlets 
teeming with vulgarity and blasphemy. 

But is there good reason for retaining our col- 
lege-seal, and making it our endeavor to verify it 
by filling in what is lacking in the consecration 
which- it signifies ? Let me beg you to listen, not 
merely as to what it may be fitting for your vale- 
dictory preacher to say, but as to what may be of 
the profoundest concern for each and all of you in 
the life that now opens before you. Does the 
consecration of these halls by our fathers to 
Christ and the Church hold good for all time ? Is 
Jesus Christ the same yesterday and to-day, — in the 



268 BACCALAUBEATE SEBMONS. 



nineteenth century as in the first ? If so, we may 
be safe in adding the " for ever " of our text ; for 
that which is changeable and transient could not 
have retained its identity through the revolutions, 
destructions, and renovations of these eighteen 
hundred years. 

Let us, first, look at the person and character 
of Jesus Christ. For he is his religion. It is im- 
possible to separate his teachings from his life. In 
this respect he stands alone in all these ages. 
There are other great teachers whose words would 
be worth as much as they are, were they anony- 
mous, — some, like Seneca, whose words would be 
of much greater significance and impressiveness, 
were they not at harsh variance with what is 
known or suspected of their characters. On the 
other hand, there are good lives which we contem- 
plate with admiration and love, yet which at the 
best teach us nothing new, — generally deriving 
their lustre as reflected light from Christ, and 
differing from him in that they reflect his light 
unevenly; that they are models of some, not 
equally of all virtues ; that they have about them 
the birth-marks of country, time, and circum- 
stance ; that they are not cosmopolitan in such a 
sense that they are equally impressive, edifying, 
and instructive to persons of all ages, lands and 
conditions ; and that they are not inexhaustible and 
ever-new in their interest, and most earnestly and 
diligently perused by those most familiar with them. 



CHRISTO ET EC CLE SI AE. 



269 



Think one moment. These four inartificial 
memoirs of Christ have been read for nearly two 
thousand years, by myriads of people, in public 
and in private. We grow familiar with their 
words. Thousands upon thousands know them 
by heart, yet never read or hear a portion of them 
with weariness. They are read through twice a 
year in the services of some churches, as often in 
many Christian families. Yet no one says, " Lay 
them aside, and read something else in place of 
them. Let us have some other good life, and not 
the perpetual repetition of this which we know 
well enough already." That books will last and 
wear like these indicates something unique in 
the life which they portray. They alone, of all 
books, are like the great works of the creation, 
like the flowers and the stars and the glowing sun- 
sets and the sparkling waters, which we never 
behold to satiety, but which are more beautiful to 
us the longer we live. 

Moreover, as I have said, we find Christ's reli- 
gion, his ethics, in his life, and we best read them 
there. - Thus, do we seek a clear view and crave a 
profound feeling of the munificent providence of 
the Universal Father ? Where is his benignity, 
his compassion, his tenderness, his watchful care, 
his joy-giving spirit mirrored as in Christ, — in his 
words of love, his works of mercy, his reconciling 
cross and peace-speaking blood, so that he but 
anticipates uniform Christian experience when he 



270 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



says, " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father " ? Or is there any virtue or spiritual 
grace — piety to God, resignation, meekness, gentle- 
ness, humility— in which we would fain baptize 
our own spirits? How shall this be, unless we 
baptize ourselves anew in the contemplation of his 
devotion, his abounding charity, his majestic lowli- 
ness, his sublime endurance ? 

St. Mark gives but a few of his discourses, and 
those few abridged. Yet there is not a lesson of 
truth or duty drawn out at length by the other 
three evangelists, which we may not read as dis- 
tinctly and impressively in St. Mark's simple 
record of Christ's daily walk, of his intercourse 
with all sorts and conditions of men, of the Divine 
humanity from which goes forth a perpetual efflu- 
ence of all that is most winning, endearing, stimu- 
lating to the conscience, fraught with instruction 
in righteousness. 

Consider, too, how he is at once identified with, 
yet detached from, his surroundings, and he could 
not be the one without being the other ; for those 
traits of perfect humanity that were in him could 
have their manifestation only in the actual world 
in which he moved. Yet they are to that world 
like the circumambient air about us, which is in 
contact with every being and substance, while 
never yielding up its specific properties, — with and 
in all, yet its identity unchanged. Though among 
Jews, he is no more a Jew than had he lived in 



CHRISTO ET ECCLESIAE. 



271 



Arabia. We never feel that the peculiarities, 
much less the prejudices, frailties, or follies of his 
age and people cleave to him, or dim his lustre as 
the Sun of Righteousness for our whole race, or 
make his example any the less the cynosure for 
those of all nations, for man so long as he shall 
upon the earth, for man so long as he shall live 
with God in heaven. 

Mark, too, how his character transcends even 
the grandest chapters, and gives their chief interest 
to the sublimest scenes, of his outward life. The 
narrative of Lazarus restored to his sisters from the 
sepulchre at Bethany owes its surpassing charm 
less to the event itself than to our Lord's tender 
sympathy, — to the heart that drinks in the tears 
of the stricken household, bears their griefs, carries 
their sorrows. As we read — and who can read the 
story for the hundreth time without profound 
emotion ? — we have reached the climax of majestic 
sweetness and sovereign love before he arrives at 
the tomb ; it no longer surprises us that a voice like 
his could wake the dead ; and we can only pray 
that, when we lie down to our last sleep, it may 
be to hear that same awakening voice summoning 
us where death itself shall die. 

This character which grows upon us whenever 
we attempt to define it, so that in no other office 
do words so utterly fail to overtake thought 
and feeling, is the essence of Christianity, — at once 
its body and its soul. It has been, beyond a ques- 



272 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

tion, the greatest force in human history. Its in- 
fluence has, from its first appearance among men, 
culminated without decline. It has formed the 
best and most noble minds and souls of each suc- 
ceeding age, those most loved and honored of their 
race ; and they who have won the crown of sur- 
passing excellence have always been the most ready 
to cast down their crowns before him, and to cry, 
" Thou alone art worthy." 

Such, till now, has been the aspect which Jesus 
has borne ; such the light in which he still is seen. 
He lived in an age, in point of knowledge, of science, 
of the humanities, if not of the luxuries, of civiliz- 
ation, far beneath our own, — in a country on which 
the rays of classic culture shone only by dim and 
distant reflection, and where the refinements of 
the world's great capitals had hardly modified the 
simpler manners and habits of provincial life. We 
have his picture painted for us by men of scanty 
education, of a narrow range of thought, and of 
obscure social position. It may have been no mar- 
vel if they accounted him great. But they do not 
say so. They waste no words in panegyric. They 
give us a plain, unambitious narrative of what they 
heard and saw, — a story so simple that we can ac- 
count for its unemotional, prosaic style only by its 
literal truth, — by their having been so intimately 
familiar with the wondrous life that it had ceased 
to surprise them, just as dwellers in Alpine regions 



CHB1ST0 ET EC CLE SI AE. 



273 



might write coolly and calmly about " signs and 
wonders of the elements " of which the very 
thought stirs our pulses to a quicker throb. We 
have Jesus as he appeared to their always upturned 
view. The ages have piled up vast masses of in- 
telligence and erudition, of proud names, great ex- 
amples, glorious achievements. We stand on the 
mountain ; they were on the plain far, very far be- 
low. We from our eminence look down on all that 
the intervening ages have brought forth. To him 
alone must we look up. He holds in our time the 
same moral, spiritual pre-eminence in which he was 
beheld by the humble fishermen of Galilee. The 
same yesterday, to-day ; how can we fail to add 
"and for ever " ? 

But " No," say some who claim to represent the 
ripest thought of the age ; and chiefly those whose 
work has been with the microscope and the scalpel. 
The laws of development which they trace, the 
laws of transmutation which they postulate, among 
the lower regions of animated nature, they claim 
for mind and soul, for genius and virtue, for philan- 
thropy and piety. Generalization per saltum, by 
a heaven-wide leap which no sound philosophy sanc- 
tions, reduces all phenomena that have been sup- 
posed to belong to a super-sensual realm into 
chemico-physical phenomena, occurring in an in- 
evitable and endless chain of antecedents and conse- 
quents, each link evolved from the inherent force 
of automatic nature. Jesus, with whatever of 



274 BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



moral power, of spiritual beauty, may be found in 
him, can have been only a spontaneous, necessary 
product of that coarse Galilean soil, of that nar- 
row, bigoted people, of the traditions of the syn- 
agogue about trivial ritualistic details and hair's- 
breadth distinctions in casuistry, of the rude dis- 
cipline of the carpenter's shop, and the unlettered 
peasantry of the despised Nazareth. I would only 
ask you to attempt the application of this theory to 
Homer, to Raphael, to Dante, to Shakespeare, to 
men that might be named from every age, whose 
antecedents and surroundings could account for 
nothing in their genius but its defects and limita- 
tions. When you can bring them into line with 
the natural history of zoophytes and tadpoles, 
even then I doubt whether you can force into the 
same category him among the children of men in 
whom the closest scrutiny reveals neither defect 
nor limitation, but only finer lines and richer tints 
of spiritual beauty and loveliness. In truth, every 
exceptional human being, every transcendent gen- 
ius who has stood forth from his own kindred, 
race, and age for the admiring wonder of all 
times and lands, is an index of a higher order of 
phenomena than those of mere physical develop- 
ment, — of a Divine spirit which fashions man, not 
by an inevitable pattern, but of its own free and 
gracious will, and implies, too, the possibility — but 
once actualized — of the incarnation of that spirit 
in a human form that shall in all its aspects mirror 



CRBISTO ET ECCLESIAE. 



275 



and image its Divine Archetype. I am glad to 
relegate to material science the entire realm of 
what is confessedly and manifestly physical, and if 
it shall only trace by authentic tokens — which it 
has not begun to do — my descending line of 
ancestry, I will not as regards this bodily frame 
disown the parentage which, on aesthetic grounds, 
I yet would fain ignore ; but there is an ascending 
line of spiritual ancestry reaching back and up to 
God, to which my own consciousness bears such 
testimony as I cannot deny or evade, and which, 
did not my soul feel its divine sonship, is still 
made manifest in Jesus, who was confessedly the 
son of Mary, and no less indubitably by infallible 
birth-marks the Son of God. 

Jesus being what he is in perfectness of char- 
acter, in the spiritual primacy which he holds in 
the minds and hearts of myriads of loyal believers, 
of thousands of the wisest, greatest, and best all 
over the civilized world, of not a few of the fore- 
most adepts in the very science in whose name his 
sovereignty is disputed, — filling in our own age of 
advanced culture the same transcendent place in 
which the reverence and love of his pristine disci- 
ples enthroned him, — I can see no reason why his 
name should ever be erased from our college-seal, 
still less, why the consecration should not be to- 
day as sincere and genuine as it was when the 
unskilled burin of the old colonial engraver first 
scratched those letters there. But the consecra- 



276 



BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



tion must be, not in glass and parchment. Its 
altar and its sacrifice are the living soul. I am 
glad to know that by some of you our seal is dis- 
tinctly recognized as expressing the only worthy 
aim of this earthly life. Would to heaven that 
the self-consecration to God and duty, nothing less 
than which can it mean, might be consummated in 
each one of you ! It will be your highest joy, your 
pledge of a success which no earthly failure can 
arrest or mar, — of honor on which obscurity, or 
human misapprehension, or ill report can cast no 
shadow. 

" To Christ and the Church," is our motto. 
Not to enter into technical exposition, it is enough 
to say that the Church implies the open avowal of 
Christian faith, and union in worship and in Chris- 
tian service with those who make the like avowal. 
In a time when there is much hostility, open and 
covert, to Christianity, it becomes one to show 
his colors. Jesus received Nicodemus by night, 
but Nicodemus came uninvited; nor can J think 
that the complacent regard of our Saviour can 
now rest on those who dare neither to drive from 
their hearts nor to take upon their lips the faith of 
their childhood. He who really believes in Christ 
is bound for his own sake to give to his faith the 
precision, consistency, and force which are always 
given to what we believe by profession and utter- 
ance ; and for the sake of others it is incumbent 



CHBISTO ET ECCLESIAE. 



277 



on him to throw the weight of his influence and 
advocacy on the side of his convictions. The 
Church — not in any narrow or restricted significa- 
tion, but in the sense which we cannot doubt 
Jesus would give to it, as embracing all who in the 
way that seems to them true and genuine attest 
their loyalty to him — is the main aggressive force 
against human guilt and misery, the chief instru- 
mentality for the virtue, progress, and happiness 
of our race. If the college is to send forth men 
with trained and furnished minds, fitted for fore- 
most places in the community, it is in the Church 
that they can do the most efficient service ; and 
there is no power or attainment of the educated 
intellect, which cannot be and ought not to be 
consecrated to the conferment of those highest 
benefits to man, which are identical with the 
ascendency of Christian faith and principle. 

My friends, permit me in conclusion to urge 
upon your serious thought our college motto. 
You must admit that Christ and the Church, if 
they hold any place, are entitled to the first place. 
Indifference to Christianity, common as it is, is 
utterly unreasonable. Religion, if it belong any- 
where, has its rightful office, as the shaping 
element of character, as the habitual spring of 
action, as the guiding principle of life. Its claims 
are not duly met by tacit assent, but only by the 
consecration of the heart, the will, the active 



278 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



powers to its cultivation in your own souls, to its 
diffusion in the world around you. It is not a 
mere sentiment, but a pervading spirit and an 
energizing force. Your superior privilege sets you 
apart as lights of the world. It is, therefore, in- 
cumbent on you to see that the light within you 
be not darkness ; and, if it be indeed light, to cher- 
ish and intensify its clear shining in the entire 
sphere of your example, influence, and endeavor. 
For these many years, in the pulpit and in the 
class-room, it has been my constant aim and effort 
to give Christianity the queenly place which, or 
none, is rightfully hers. My parting wish for you 
is that she may hold this place in your hearts and 
in your lives. May the blessing of God and the 
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all 
and in you all ; and Heaven grant that on the 
opening career, the growing honor, the finished 
course of every one of you may be engraved the 
legend of our college seal, Christo et Ecclesiae. 



XIX. 



HOSPITALITY. 

(1883.) 

" Be not forgetful to entertain strangers ; for thereby some have 
entertained angels unawares." — Hebeews xiii. 2. 

So, I think, those of us who are householders 
can testify. We have found angel guests, life-long 
friends, in strangers whom we first received for 
their sakes, and were ever afterward glad to wel- 
come for our own. Hospitality — perhaps now 
oftener a privilege than a duty — was, when our 
text was written, not infrequently an imperative 
duty. Only thus could a wayfarer be sure of 
a safe and comfortable shelter. He might be left 
houseless, and there are on record cases in which 
travellers, spurned where they sought lodgings, 
and constrained to pass the night in the street, 
came to grief, and brought guilt and shame on 
those who had closed their doors against them. 
The inns, scattered at remote distances on the 
chief routes of travel, sometimes, as at Bethlehem, 
in villages on the great highways, oftener in soli- 
tary places, gave enclosure and security, — nothing 
more. No one stayed or wanted to stay at them. 



280 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



They were frequented only by sojourners for a 
night or for a sultry noontide hour. No wonder 
that hospitality held an honored place among the 
virtues, in classic fable richly recompensed by 
itinerant gods, in holy writ commended by explicit 
precept and illustrious example. 

The outward is the type of the inward ; things 
seen, of things unseen ; the houses in which we 
dwell, of the houses which we are ; our attitude 
toward human guests, real or potential, of our 
posture of mind and heart towards thoughts that 
come as strangers, new, yet not therefore true, 
and equally not therefore untrue, — strangers wor- 
thy of a hospitable reception, even though they 
remain not with us, — perhaps angels, whom, once 
lodged within, we shall not willingly let go from 
us. There are, moreover, some minds that will 
not, some that cannot show hospitality ; for hospi- 
tality presupposes a home and a guest-chamber. 

There are some whose minds have no guest- 
chamber. They regard hospitality as a sin. They 
have taken in a set of opinions — truths they call 
them ; truths they may be or may not be — and 
they have no room for anything more. The walls 
of their intellect are built up, brick upon 
brick, laid in insoluble cement ; the structure, of 
the scantiest dimensions, is early finished and 
ceiled over ; and no power on earth can either tear 
it down or enlarge it. 

Others there are whose minds have no home- 



HOSPITALITY. 



281 



apartments, but are like the oriental caravansaries, 
always open, because they have no doors that can 
be shut. Every vain dream, or fleeting fancy, or 
baseless theory has free admission, though but 
brief stay. The guests that come to-night are 
gone to-morrow. What these men call their firm 
convictions can be put to instant flight by the 
merest cavil of sceptical criticism. Even their 
own self-consciousness they learn from the latest 
authority, and slough it off when that authority 
ceases to be paramount. Incongruous ideas, in- 
compatible theories, like uncongenial lodgers at a 
tavern, are- quartered side by side, yet remain not 
together long enough for , their host to detect their 
mutual dissiliency. But in the promiscuous crowd 
of comers and goers truth finds neither unob- 
structed entrance nor space for quiet abode, even 
as God's Truth incarnate first saw the light of this 
world in a stable, because the throng of chapmen 
and donkey-drivers left no room for him in the 
inn. 

Meanwhile, there are new guests, with just 
claims on hospitality, continually arriving, and 
never so many as now. They come from two 
directions, — from the unknown and from the par- 
tially known. They come from the unknown, 
which is still an immeasurably vast domain, — 
though finite, to our apprehension infinite, — grow- 
ing, too, upon us faster than our knowledge 
grows ; for every province annexed to our science 



282 BA CCALA UREA TE SERMONS. 



gives us a dim, yet yearning sense of abutting 
provinces of our nescience, and as the horizon 
that bounds our knowledge enlarges its circumfer- 
ence, it indicates an ever more extended region of 
things knowable which it hides from our view. 
The term agnostic would be by no means inap- 
propriate as characterizing the relation of human 
science to the fields of its research, and those who 
know the most are the men who are conscious of 
knowing the least. The term is misapplied, only 
when employed as to our knowledge of Him whose 
being underlies all that is not chaos, and without 
whom the existence of the very minds that fail to 
recognize Him is inconceivable. 

As to the partly known, also, there are con- 
stantly urged upon us new theories, profounder 
analyses, broader generalizations, in all of which 
there is verisimilitude, that is, a truthlikeness, yet 
not therefore necessarily truth. A theory may be 
plausible at first sight, simply because it is superfi- 
cial ; an analysis, directed by a false theory, may 
be so misdirected as to travesty the very facts that 
it reveals ; a generalization founded on accidents, 
not on properties, may place objects or phenomena 
elsewhere than among their own legitimate kindred. 
But through these risks we must make progress 
toward a clearer view, a larger comprehension, a 
more tenacious grasp, of what we know in part, and 
it is only by hospitality to all guests that come to 
us with worthy credentials, that we can learn 



HOSPITALITY. 



283 



which of them we ought to keep, and which to dis- 
miss. 

Now the great work of a liberal education is to 
make room for guests, to enlarge the mind in every 
dimension, to give it a receptivity at once generous 
and discriminating, and to teach it where to look for 
truth, how to test what claims to be truth, and so 
to order its own contents that they may be always 
accessible and serviceable. Four years at the Uni- 
versity, at what is of necessity the formative age as 
to mental habits, may be of unmeasurable or of 
infinitesimal value, and whether it be the one or 
the other depends less on the fact than on the kind 
of industry. If the time be devoted to the acqui- 
sition of details, to the memorizing of the contents 
of books, the graduate, though a hard student, will 
not have transcended the grade of intellect implied 
in the literal meaning of our term sophomore. He 
not only will have gained no thorough knowledge 
of anything, but he will have no just conception of 
the relations and bearings of such sections and 
patches of things knowable as he seems to have 
made his own. But the same time passed in con- 
versance with fundamental principles, truths and 
laws in the several departments in which a man of 
advanced culture has no right to be ignorant, while 
it will give very little knowledge of particulars, 
will fit one to be a successful learner and investi- 
gator in whatever realm of science or literature 
may claim his study and research. University 



284 



BA CCALA UREA TE SEEM ONS. 



training should not fill the mind, — that could be 
done only for a mind not worth filling; but it 
should make the mind so large as to preclude the 
thought of its ever being filled. 

The mind thus trained has ample guest-cham- 
bers, and is prepared for a generous hospitality. 
But shall this be all ? Shall the mind be a mere 
inn ; or a home also ? Are there truths that may be 
so lodged within that they can never be dislodged, 
— truths in whose society all new-comers that have 
a right to fair entertainment, even if for the briefest 
stay, may be made welcome, and with which soph- 
istry and patent falsity will find themselves in 
uncongenial company ? Without such permanent 
inmates there can be no true hospitality. There is 
no hospitality in a tavern, open to travellers of 
every sort, and equally little is there in the mind 
that knows no difference between a tramp and an 
angel. 

Now there are truths which may be so deter- 
mined that they need not be reconsidered, but may 
be regarded as less possessions than attributes of 
the mind, elements of its own consciousness ; and 
truths of this class are among the earliest attain- 
able, and at the same time are essential factors in the 
judgments that are or ought to be passed on all 
other alleged truths. It is manifest that such 
truths must be ; else there could be progress neither 
in the individual nor in the race, — the only possible 
movement would be as on a wind-swept sea of ice. 



HOSPITALITY. 



285 



There are in all departments of science settled, 
closed questions which can never be opened again, 
and the re-opening of which would make science a 
word without meaning. To be sure, these establish- 
ed truths may be embraced and merged in still more 
comprehensive truths ; they are thus, however, 
not negatived, but re-affirmed and eternized. 

In the moral and spiritual universe the mind 
may early have closed questions, established truths ; 
and it is of prime importance that the momentous 
issues in this entire department be not left open. 

The question that takes precedence of all others 
is that of the being of a God, self-conscious, omni- 
scient, supreme, Creator, Father. This lies behind, 
and is independent of, all cosmological theories. 
It would scandalize no intelligent theist were the 
present tendency of natural science followed to its 
extreme, and the entire realm of organized being 
(and with it what we call mind and soul) traced 
back to homogeneous specks of protoplasm. I do 
not believe this, indeed, though I have no doubt 
that to evolution belongs a large part of what half 
a century ago wa p termed creation. But suppose 
all that evolutionists can claim, one cannot but 
ask whether it is conceivable that atoms swirling 
in infinite space should, of their own motion, shape 
themselves into self-multiplying cells, having with- 
in them the germ, and prophecy, and promise of 
all this fair universe of verdure, bloom and fruit- 
age, of glad life and strength and beauty, of will, 



286 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



intelligence and love. There probably exist at 
this moment within the range of telescopic vision 
precisely such conglomerations of nebulous matter 
as our solar system was or may have been. Sup- 
pose that you, with your present human intelli- 
gence, with clear vision, and a life whose hours 
were centuries, were to watch in one of these 
world-teeming nebulas the cooling and globing of 
successive rings around the still naming nucleus, 
the movements of unconnected atoms into the 
rudiments of organic life, the successive stages of 
development, culminating in powers which — if 
there be a God — are nothing less than godlike, — 
could you for one moment believe this grand pro- 
cession of being marching with ever-growing 
ranks along the ages without a leader, these multi- 
form types of life launched into existence without 
a life-bestower, these laws that clasp the whole 
system in a zone of perfectness enacting them- 
selves without a lawgiver? Yet more, taking 
your stand in thought by a lump of lifeless, shape- 
less matter, can you conceive of its spontaneously 
becoming yourself, with your present capacity of 
thinking, knowing, feeling and willing, even 
though the process took unnumbered centuries, 
the conditions were all in accordance with the 
latest postulates of science, and the matter veri- 
table star-dust? Science, you must remember, 
accounts for nothing in the genesis of worlds or of 
beings. The most that it does is to carry back 



HOSPITALITY. 



287 



the chain of causation for seons instead of cen- 
turies. It adds not one whit to the probability of 
self-originating or self-shaping matter. It shows 
no material cause for the beginning of organic 
being, for the upspringing of order from chaos, 
even if matter were eternal. It finds abundant 
testimony in nature that there was a beginning of 
the cosmos, a time the worlds were not, and leaves 
for the only alternative, either what — disguise it 
as you may in philosophic phrase — is neither more 
or less than the fortuitous evolution of the uni- 
verse by an infinite series of happy chances, or its 
evolution from the will and might of an intelli- 
gent First Cause. The latter hypothesis, it is 
said, is inconceivable. I grant this is so, and I 
should expect it to be so, if it be true ; for in the 
counsels of Omniscience and the workings of 
Omnipotence there must be heights and depths 
which man in the infancy of his being cannot 
scale or fathom. The former supposition is easily 
conceivable, and it can be set forth in no form 
that does not betray its innate inadequacy and ab- 
surdity. 

But if God be the only possible cause of 
nature, if without Him the cosmos cannot have 
begun to be, you may take His being as a deter- 
minate truth, and I would have you lodge it, not 
in the guest-chamber, but in the inmost home- 
apartment of your souls ; and 3-011 may keep it 
there if you will only conform your interior life to 



288 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



it, if you will govern feeling, desire, volition with 
sacred reference to it, and, above all, if you will 
recognize it in prayer, which attests its own 
reality, and brings the Divine communion which 
it craves. 

Nor need this conviction be disturbed by any 
stranger-guests that you may entertain. Un- 
doubtedly there will be, as there have been, dis- 
coveries or interpretations of natural phenomena 
that at first thought militate with faith in God, — 
cases in which the world is not ordered precisely 
as we should order it were it under our control, — 
cases in which system seems to survive or trans- 
cend the need of it, as in the vestiges of organs no 
longer used, — cases in which inevitable needs 
seem to have no provision made for them. As to 
such cavils there are two things to be said, — one, 
that if there be a disparity of wisdom between the 
Creator and the critic, there must of necessity be 
differences of opinion between them ; the other, 
that the existence of the power to criticize in a 
being with such an ancestry as the critic probably 
claims for himself, saying to the worm, " Thou art 
my mother and my sister," has immeasurably 
more argumentative force for the being of a 
Creator than the cavils of all the sceptics since the 
world began can urge against it. 

Another conviction which your souls need as a 
permanent indweller is a sense of the intrinsic and 
indelible character of moral acts as right or wrong. 



HOSPITALITY. 



289 



Your own consciousness, if you will give it voice, 
bears witness to the sanctity and obligation of the 
immutable, absolute, eternal right. Even were the 
throne of the universe filled by malign and vicious 
omnipotence, there is that within you which would 
defy and scorn its sway. The rebellion of Pro* 
metheus, in the Grecian mythology, against the 
unrighteous majesty of Zeus is but the type of the 
protest against the intrinsically wrong and evil ut- 
tered by every developed and unperverted human 
soul. You can no sooner perceive the fittingness 
of an act than you feel an assurance which cannot 
be made stronger that its performance is your 
bounden duty. This sense of the right springs 
not from reasoning, but is antecedent to it. It 
comes not from philosophy, but underlies it. It is 
intuitive, immutable, indestructible. It eludes, 
indeed, the manipulation of physical science, the 
scalpel and the microscope, but is none the less 
real, vital, essential, because they fail to detect and 
analyze it. You may admit all that they discover 
and reveal ; for physical psychology has made and 
will still make contributions to man's knowledge 
of his own being, of transcendent interest and 
value. But before the right and its shrine in the 
inexorable conscience science retreats baffled, or 
else points with trembling finger in reverent awe 
to Him who is most to be adored, as in his infinite 
Godhead the impersonation of the eternal right. 
I would crave for Christian faith, also, a perma- 



290 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



nent home in your souls, and especially because with 
it God and the eternal right will have their con- 
stant indwelling, — without it they may not have 
room kept for them. The evidences of Chistianity 
commonly so called, I am not disposed to under- 
value for their uses. They are for the most part 
defensive, and presuppose assault ; and I regard 
them as all that they purport to be. Christianity 
has been maligned, its records impugned, its witness- 
es contradicted ; and at every point at which it 
has been assailed, it has more than held its ground, 
so that the onslaughts of its enemies have given 
rise to ample demonstration of the authenticity 
and genuineness of its claims as an historical reli- 
gion. But it is its own best evidence, and, how- 
ever it may be with the speculative intellect, it is 
only as its own evidence that it can have its right- 
ful place in the heart of man. In those biogra- 
phies of Jesus called the Gospels, you find the 
Divine character outlined by him in words worthy 
to have dropped from heaven on the listening ear 
of humanity, and the outline filled in and rounded 
in his life with a majestic sweetness, a loveliness so 
intense, as to make our warmest recognition of it 
cold, and to render it no hyperbole, but self-evidenc- 
ing truth, when he says, " He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father." You find in him, too, the 
absolute and eternal right, not in precept alone, 
but still more in form and countenance, in a per- 
fectness of virtue and a beauty of holiness which 



HOSPITALITY. 



291 



make him not brightest among the stars in the 
moral firmament, but the sun of righteousness in 
whose light the most resplendent stars grew pale. 
If you could only forget all that men have said 
about Christianity, all dogmatic disputes and sub- 
tilties, all that has unworthily borne the sacred 
name, and look to Christ alone, I am sure that he 
could not fail of your fervent loyalty, service and 
love, — of a welcome and a home in your heart of 
hearts. 

With God, and the eternal right, and Christ, their 
image and impersonation, not as transient guests, 
but as permanent indwellers, you are prepared for a 
hospitality both broad and wise. These fundamental 
truths of the spiritual world, as I have said, are not 
contingent on science, but belong to the higher realm 
of intuition. They are no more subject to physical 
tests than is your aesthetic sense, or your poetic feel- 
ing, or your love for your mother. The reasons 
for their reception are not so much before you, 
as within you, and they can never be less valid 
than now ; and when those truths are once taken, 
not into the speculative intellect, but into the region 
of sentiment and affection, and made not beliefs, but 
loves, principles, motives, they will stay on with you 
through this earthly life into the life eternal. They, 
too, will be of essential service to you in discrimi- 
nating among the guests that may claim your hospi- 
tality. Even scientific truth has its spiritual af- 
finities and' antipathies ; and the instances are not 



292 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



wanting in which spiritual intuition has been pro- 
phet and guide in the most momentous discoveries 
and generalizations. Indeed, there is hardly an es- 
tablished and universally recognized law of the 
physical universe which has not had its inception 
in a mind accustomed to contemplate the universe 
as pervaded by the present God, and in which faith 
has not held the torch for science. Faith and rev- 
erence will never limit the range of your legiti- 
mate inquiry and research. They will leave you 
free and fearless in the pursuit of truth wherever 
it may lea* you. They will exclude such specula- 
tions only as transcend their rightful sphere, and 
deny the reality of things not seen, because they 
are not seen, — of the life of principle, love and 
piety, because it eludes physical analysis, — of the 
life with and in Christ and God, because its factors 
cannot be fused in the crucible. This higher, in- 
ner, divine life, if once yours, you will not let go. 
God grant that it be yours. 

As you part on your several life-ways, may it be 
with memories of your life here that shall grow 
more precious as the years roll on, with friendships 
that shall become dearer with time and shall ripen 
into eternity, with a loyalty to the right that shall 
merit favor with man and win favor with God ; and 
would to heaven that there might be in every one 
of you a vivid consciousness of that life of which 
Jesus says, " He that liveth and believeth in me 
shall never die." 



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